"You know what I don't get?" a student asked in class yesterday. "How complicated math will ever help us in real life." He was working on his 6th Grade from A-Z project and reflecting on what he had learned this year. "I can see how I might use adding and subtracting, maybe multiplying and percents, but what else is math good for?"
"If you need to buy a new rug," one of the other kids suggested helpfully.
"Can't you just get someone to come do that?" he shrugged.
I thought of him today when another student came into my class brandishing a torn slip of paper covered in numbers. "This is a magic piece of paper!" he announced. "I used it to finally figure out that 3 small pizzas are actually less pizza than 1 medium and 1 large. BUT," he paused dramatically, "they cost the same!"
Now that's useful!
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