To be honest, this week’s activity was a bit challenging for me, as I don’t have much musical or dance background. My body coordination isn’t great, and dancing doesn’t come naturally to me. However, to help myself better understand the video, I quickly sketched Sarah Chase’s 3-against-2 movements. I realized that this could actually be an extension activity itself: having students sketch the movements as a way to deepen their understanding of the patterns and relationships involved.
Another possible extension would be to ask students to add an additional arm movement on the right hand, such as a “spring” motion (I added a set of spring movements in my sketch). Students could physically try out these movements and explore how the patterns change. What if leg movements were added as well? How many different combinations or possibilities could emerge?
For a further extension, I was also thinking about whether Sarah Chase’s idea could be replicated using smaller-scale movements, such as finger motions instead of full-body movements. These are just some initial thoughts, and I think they would be much more meaningful to explore with students and see how they interpret and respond to them in practice.
Curriculum ideas:
Mathematical patterns exist in time and motion, not only on paper
Embodied experiences can support conceptual understanding
Students often manipulate patterns and ratios symbolically without understanding what they represent
Guiding questions:
How can we connect our body with math?
How can mathematical patterns and ratios be represented with body movements?
How can we translate movement into diagrams or sketches?
One of your guiding questions really struck me as useful. "How can we connect our body with math?" It is a useful question to ask my students and I can see how it would have students open to so many possibilities to see where and how math lives beyond the paper. I have been toying with ideas in this week's readings about how to bring more whole body movement into math and I have been thinking about how important it is for people to see math as part of our world, not a separate class to get through. If math is connected authentically to our worlds, then how could we ever groan about a math class?
ReplyDeleteNice, Kristie! And Sukie, I love your creative adaptation of the whole-body movement to drawings and smaller-scale finger movements. I think these can ALL be great ways to explore these ideas about combinatorics, least common multiple, multiplication, etc. It's especially powerful if you bring them all together! I wouldn't want to abandon the whole-body large scale movements, but what a great idea to supplement them with other modalities.
ReplyDelete