Tag: authentic situation

Posted on

Comparison Shopping – Real Life Example

Saw the following price tags, shown in the two photos, at an office supply store. $4 for 4 batteries or $9 for 8 batteries. To compare we can double the smaller pack to see that 2 packs would cost $8 for 8 batteries for a better deal.

Another method is to use unit rates. Rates are a measure of one quantity, with units, per 1 unit of another quantity, e.g. you make $10 per hour. To compute

$4/4 batteries = $1/1 battery  vs $9/8 batteries = $1.13/1 battery

2018-11-18 15.49.442018-11-18 15.49.40

Below is an example of instruction for unit rates to help a student conceptually understand (pretend that gas price shown on this pump is $2 per gallon). Say you pumped 3 gallons and it cost $6. Show the 3 1-gallon gas cans together and the 6 $1 bills together. Separate them to you have equal groups to get $ per 1 gallon. You can use actual gas cans (unused) or cutouts from Google Images.

gas price rate

Posted on

Authentic Work Experience

Very clever activity implemented by the teacher who runs the Life Skills program at our school. She created envelopes (below) for each teacher. The envelopes do not contain any content but are used for practice sorting mail for the students in the program. The students in the program sort and deliver them to our mailbox. We return them to this return bin for reuse.

Such experiences should be available to all of our  students who are more severely impacted. Many will need YEARS of practice to develop skills which means a transition program from 18-21 years old may not be enough.

work experience envelopes.png

Posted on

Opportunities for Parents to Engage Students with Math

Math is often considered an esoteric set of information that is disjointed from the reality people face, aside perhaps from money. Sadly, in school, especially in older grade levels, math is indeed presented this way.

sally math problem

A situation as simple as riding an elevator provides opportunities to show and engage a student with math applied in authentic and common situations. For example, the elevator buttons address counting and cardinality (4 indicates a total of 4 floors – ignoring the R), comparison (if we are on floor 2 and need to go down, which floor do we go to?) and measurement (height above ground floor measured in floors). Such situations also provides opportunities for generalization into other settings – the important settings of every day life!

2019-01-18 18.33.56

Posted on

Authentic Activities – Money and Prices

Below is a photo of a typical worksheet for money. I worked with a parent of a high school student severely impacted by autism and she explained that her son worked on nothing but worksheets when he worked on math. For students with more severe disabilities the worksheet may not be real or meaningful as the photos and the setting may be too abstract.

adding-money-worksheet-1

Below is a photo of shelves in a mock grocery store we set up at our school for students who were in a life skills program. They would have a shopping list, collect the items in a basket then compute the total cost. We had a mock register set up (eventually we procured an actual working register) and the students made the same types of calculations they would on a worksheet but in an authentic setting, which was more concrete. We would start with simple money amounts, e.g. $1.00 then make the prices increasingly more challenging, e.g. $1.73.

mock grocery store
%d