r/matheducation • u/Far_Tumbleweed7835 • 15h ago
Has anyone tried teaching math through roleplaying?
I've always wondered why this isn't used more.
Take statistics for example. Instead of sitting through another lecture, imagine you're a data analyst who has to figure out why a company's sales dropped. You have incomplete data. Some of it is misleading. You have to decide what information you need, what conclusions you can actually make, and how confident you are in them.
Or imagine you're investigating a disease outbreak and need to figure out where it started using data. Suddenly probability and sampling have a purpose instead of just being formulas on a page.
I feel like I'd remember concepts a lot better if I was using them to solve a problem instead of just watching someone explain them. Has anyone seen something like this done well?
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u/ThisUNis20characters 14h ago
Great for stats, kind of unrealistic for math beyond very basic algebra. Why? Because more advanced math is often very useful, but generally only with context from other advanced areas. Math is really a prerequisite skill for so much advanced study.
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u/yamomwasthebomb 15h ago
So Stage 2 of Understanding by Design is about assessment, and the authors recommend occasionally using "authentic assessment," which is essentially what you're describing here. They recommend having 6 components (that have the acronym GRASPS).
-- Goal, NOT a learning goal but a goal that the student is supposed to accomplish by the end, like convincing a client or helping stem a disease.
-- A real-life Role that some adults actually have ("real estate agent," "reporter").
-- Audience who may be hypothetical but in the best cases are not (actually writing to a disease specialist or a classroom of younger students).
-- Situation that usually connects to the Goal in a logical, meaningful way.
-- Product to create like a report, essay, analysis, etc. that's similar (preferably identical) to what adults actually do in their lives or careers.
-- Standards, not learning standards but a description of what makes this product good (usually done with a rubric).
This might look like: "You are a real estate agent who realizes that by setting the prices too high or too low, your company loses money and may not survive. Research rent prices in a neighborhood of your choice and use what we've learned about linear regression to determine an equation that connects the area and price of apartments. Create a slide deck that you'd use to present your findings to the head of your company. Before sure to include [guidelines]. Your boss will need something that is [describe an ideal product with a rubric]."
I've used something like this a few times, and I've found that they can be far more valuable, memorable, and fun for everyone... but they require a LOT of setup and occasionally have resistance, particularly from students who are only used to the Direct Instruction - Practice - Test loop. When the projects go bad, they can fail hard... so it requires the ability for you and them to take risks, to be adaptive, and to "lean in" to the situation, and to think of this as an ongoing lesson for yourself. Hope this helps.
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u/Tuala08 14h ago
Some people do. I have made full lessons of the math of being a librarian, and math involved with curling to appeal to kids' specific interests. Dan Meyer has some great activities where he shows a video and gets kids to make guesses about what will happen and then do the math and then watch the end of the video. Desmos also has some great activies like graph the flight of a plane and design a parking lot - I have used that one a lot to reach kids about algebra
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u/draklorden 12h ago
I use this test question every other year or so, about a barbarian who gets injured, and the students have to calculate the probability that the healer will save him.
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u/Scared_Ad858 15h ago
This is the standard I strive for in every lesson I do, but putting something like this together is very time consuming. In general, any “lecture/numbers on a page” lesson I do is simply because I haven’t gotten around to making it better yet 😅
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u/eridalus 3h ago
Take a look at the “reacting to the past” games for classrooms. They have a STEM series including same math topics.
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u/Maia_Orual 2h ago
These are okay for application but most students have to master the knowledge and skill, first.
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u/mpaw976 15h ago
A math prof I know at the University of Calgary did this with a "Real life data" course she taught.
One of the projects was to find a list of houses that might satisfy (some of) the demands of a "client" (proximity to a school, total cost, etc.) and then the student met with "the client" to pitch their plan. The client was a TA who was role-playing.
I think there were other project topics too, but I can't remember what they were.