by Mandy Martes, Koogler Middle School
This WebQuest is designed to get students thinking about real-world applications of the math they learn in sixth grade. The goal is to eliminate the question, "Why do we have to learn this?". Students will visit sites illustrating authentic applications of math standards.
Teacher Introduction
Math teachers in middle and high school have a challenge on their hands. We are expected to cover many standards throughout the school year, and time is limited. It is essential that students see the relevance of the math they are learning to their own lives. Sometimes it is not enough to just tell students how they will use the math in their lives, or even to have them do 'word problems' based in real-world, contextual situations. The best way to show students the relevance of the math they are learning is through problem-based learning activities. Unfortunately, these activities, which are supposed to be integrated across curricular subject matter, are very time consuming. If you are able to offer your students one or two of these experiences throughout the school year, you are lucky! Unless your school is designed to collaboratively support this type of project learning, you are probably in a situation where you have students each day for one short class period, which is not much time to help students to learn everything they are supposed to in a school year.
This WebQuest is designed to be completed at any point during the school year, but ideally could be used at the beginning. There are seven different concepts, so essentially there are actually seven different WebQuests. If you want to, you can just use one of the concepts and have students complete that activity right before you teach the concept. The way the Quest is designed, though, is to have students work in collaborative groups and to choose one of the seven topics to do the Quest on. Then, in the part of the year when you are about to introduce a concept, the group who completed the Quest on that topic will do the job of introducing that unit or topic for you! In this way, you will only use class time for the WebQuest once, and the presentations will benefit your students for the entire year!