Reality Math

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Reality Math
By KimW

I did an interim with 6,7,& 8th grade math and I found a site that is great. Search this site and you might find it. I know it had something to do with smileys and smiley faces. Anyhoo, in my experience the children loved
a motivational activity that I got from that site. It was a whole unit called Reality Math that I broke up into sections and did every Friday. Reality math has many different activities like keeping up with a checkbook (balancing, spending, etc.) You start by handing out sales flyers and the students can buy anything they want. They must total up all amounts and figure the taxes.

Then, they write you a "play check" and balance their checkbooks. At the beginning you give them all the same amount and they have to keep up with the amount that they have and how much they can spend. Like if they have $10.00 in their accounts, they must remember when "shopping" that they will have to figure in taxes.
It is also a motivational tool because you give the students who do their homework every night, make good on tests, etc. so much money a week to spend. Such as, a 100 on a test could be $20.00 while a 95 is $10.00 and so on. Students catch on and they want to gain their money to spend on Friday. If they have no money, they have no fun!
Other Reality Math activities include recipes using standard and metric measurments, building things, using perimeter and area. There are many more but these are all I can remember right now.
Hope this helps.
KimW