Using Student Made Books.

 Since school moved to distance learning, our school choose to send out packets in both a digital form and hard copy.  If a student wants a hard copy, they can get it when they get their lunch.  I am not allowed to introduce new material but I can create activities and work that focuses on work they've already learned.

Since most of my students do have phones, I asked them to take pictures of certain mathematical things, then create a digital book with the photo's and an explanation of the math.

This way they are the ones finding the real life applications of math.  They are creating the book, and they are the ones who tell me all about it.

They've been asked to find all the different shapes they can in town.  They had to identify the shape, where it was found and explain why they chose the shape.

Another activity was to create a recipe of something they made at home.  They had to include measurements, directions, a photo of the finished product, the number of people it fed, and how to cut the recipe in half with the new measurements.

Then there is the activity where students walk around the village, looking for places that use math, provide photo's and explain the math used.  They might show a photo of the gas pumps with a ATV being filled next to it.  They explain how the total amount is calculated, how filling the engine is actually an inequality, and any other places, they can find.

They might snap a picture of their parent who is make masks for the local clinic.  They can show the pieces and how they are sewn together along with measurements for each part, and a photo of the finished product.

Once they have all the materials together, they can put the book together using pages, or google slides, or iBook author, or any other program like that.

Pages - allows you to choose making a book in portrait or landscape when they open a new templet for the book.  The students put their pictures in the book, text, and everything they want included.  Then they export it as either a pdf or e-pub format.

Google slides - create the book using one slide per page.  When done, save it as a pdf file and you have a book.

These books are not hard to make and when students do them, they have a way to show they understand where the math is found in real life.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.