Innovation in Curriculum: Connecting Integers to Meaningful Contexts

Eaningful contexts can be used to enhance learning of significant mathematics and promote connections between students' experience and new mathematical content (NCTM 1998). In addition, contextualized situations, whether real or imaginary, help students make visual and sometimes physical links between their informal knowledge and formal mathematical ideas. For example, linear measurements of such objects as ladders or poles that are partially above and partially below water level can be used to introduce positive and negative numbers. Moreover, such contexts as board games and sports build on students' activities and interests outside the classroom.