#MathSelfies

I know I have mentioned before that the sixth graders at our school are piloting one-to-one iPads this year.  As a result, I am constantly looking for new ways to help my students bring math to life using the iPad, both in and outside the classroom.

If you have contact with adolescents, I am sure you have come to realize that selfies are all the rage right now.  (True story: the sixth grade teachers started to see our students experience storage shortage on their iPads due to the number of photographs they had taken/stored on their iPads!)  I have had my students take pictures of real life math they have seen before on their iPads to use as support for blog posts, but I had never before issued a selfie request...so I thought maybe it was time I did.

Thank you to Erin and her mother for sharing their #mathselfie!

In addition to incorporating students' interests (ahem, selfies), there has been research for years that highlights the importance of parental involvement in education.  I thought our current unit on rates provided the perfect opportunity to include parents in the learning process.  The task I gave my students was to find a real-life advertisement (authentic learning task) and explain to their parent/grandparent/babysitter/guardian (an important adult) why this advertisement shows an example of a rate.  I also sent an email blast to parents/guardians to make them aware of the assignment and provided them with pointers for ensuring their children were on-target with their explanations, as well as some questions they could pose to further probe their children's thinking.  In order to prove this conversation occurred, the students were supposed to take a math selfie with their guardian and the real-life rate advertisement.

Thank you to Alex and his mother for sharing their #mathselfie!

When we gathered back together in class, we displayed the math selfies on the iPads and did a gallery walk to view the different photographs.  During the gallery walk, students recorded observations (science connection!) on a T-chart to note similarities and differences seen between the various rates.  We then proceeded to share our observations to create a class list, and we made connections from this list back to the conversations the students had with their guardians about the rates they found in these advertisements.  Not only did the kids have fun with the selfie assignment, this provided a great opportunity for dialogue focused on content-specific vocabulary as it relates to the real world.  To me, that's a win!

What authentic learning tasks have you tried lately with your students?  How have you provided students with the opportunity to bring their interests into the classroom?  We would love to hear your ideas, too!