Maths and Numeracy in the Real World

Whatever we do, wherever we go, we’re always using maths and numeracy without even realising it.

Making students see that maths is not just something we learn at school, but something we need in the real world and for future jobs, is a really good way of engaging them more with the subject.

To inspire your students to realise this, we’ve put together a number of ideas you can show your students about how they use maths in real life, as well as just some fantastic EducationCity Maths activities, which you can get quickly and easily, to use in your classroom. Let’s take a look…

1. Maths In the Kitchen: Baking and Cooking

When we bake and cook, we use a high ‘degree’ of mathematical skill – like what we did there? Every ingredient needs to be measured out to the right amounts and as well as this, quite a lot of the time we need to multiply or divide to get the exact amounts we’re after.

Lots of what you do in the kitchen requires maths – even turning on the oven!

To help show your students how they use maths in baking and cooking, check out our Marvellous Muffins Learn Screen and Activity…

Learn Screen

Marvellous Muffins – A tutorial on how to read unnumbered scales.

  • England: Year 5
  • Scotland: Second **
  • Wales: Year 5 & 6
  • N. Ireland: P7

Activity

Marvellous Muffins – Read partially numbered scales and be able to work out the difference between 2 given points on them.

  • England: Year 5
  • Scotland: Second **
  • Wales: Year 5 & 6
  • N. Ireland: P7

2. Using Maths & Money

We all need to know what to do with money – and this involves counting and percentages too. When we buy things at the local supermarket, or spend money online, we all might use adding or percentage skills to work out how much we’ve spent… or saved!

So that you can show your students how we use money in the real world, why not take a look at these Activities?

Activity

Show Me the Money – Combine different coins to make the same amounts of money.

  • England: Year 2
  • Scotland: Early ***
  • Wales: Year 2
  • N. Ireland: P3

Help Granny – Multiplication using money. Click on the coins to answer.

  • England: Year 4
  • Scotland: Second *
  • Wales: Year 4
  • N. Ireland: P6

Summer Break – Solve conversion problems.

  • England: Year 6
  • Scotland: Second **
  • Wales: Year 6 & 7

3. Telling the Time

We’re also using maths when we tell the time – and telling the time is a great and valuable skill to have as students will be able to practise concepts like subtraction and addition.

Whether you have a diary or a calendar too, you’re going to need time skills to be able to schedule in when you’re going to meet friends or go to occasions, or even know when you have important appointments and how long you have to get ready.

To help you out with introducing time in the classroom, here are some EducationCity maths games to try…

Topic Tool

Time – Explore time on an analogue clock to the hour and half-hour.

  • England: F2 & Year 1
  • Scotland: Early *, Early ** & Early ***
  • Wales: Reception & Year 1
  • N. Ireland: P1 & P2

Time – Explore time on both a digital clock and analogue clock to the nearest 5 minutes.

  • England: Year 2
  • Scotland: First *, First ** & First ***
  • Wales: Year 2 & 3
  • N. Ireland: P3 & P4

Activity

Stig and the Bus – Read the time from timetables.

  • England: Year 2
  • Scotland: Second *
  • Wales: Year 5 & 6
  • N. Ireland: P7

There’s so much more to explore! Just use the search bar to find even more maths games on EducationCity related to cooking, money and time.

To try out all the ways you can show students that they use maths in real life on EducationCity as mentioned here, log in or sign up for a free trial.