Whats It Called When You Use Science or Math in Art Lessons
(This is the second mail service in a three-part series. Yous tin can run across Part One here.)
The new question-of-the-calendar week is:
What are the best means you have used art in lessons?
In Part 1, Wendi Pillars, Keisha Rembert, Delia M. Cruz-Fernández, and Irina McGrath, Ph.D., offered their suggestions. Wendi, Keisha, and Delia were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show. You can besides find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.
Today, Sara Rezvi, Gretchen Bernabei, Jeremy Hyler, and Kelsey Pycior share their recommendations.
Fine art & Math
Sara Rezvi (@arsinoepi on twitter) is a old high school mathematics teacher, a current doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Higher of Education, and the program director of the Math Circles of Chicago, a nonprofit system that seeks to provide equitable access to rich and thoughtfully designed mathematics outside regular school hours for all children:
Are you a math instructor? How often exercise y'all get the post-obit comments when introducing yourself to others?
- Math? Oof, I'thou just not a math person.
- Wow, you must exist really smart.
As a former high school mathematics teacher and a current doctoral candidate studying mathematics curriculum and instruction, I find these responses deeply saddening. The get-go suggests that mathematics was something that was done TO the person speaking rather than in community with, and the second response suggests that math continues to remain a proxy for intelligence. Either way, the internalized bulletin I hear from these types of responses is clear: Mathematics is a playground for some, not all.
Only what if it'south not mathematics that's the outcome hither, simply the standard approach in how mathematics has been exceptionalized and taught in the United States?
In our newspaper, Radical Love as Praxis: Ethnic Studies and Educational activity Mathematics for Collective Liberation , my co-authors, Cathery Yeh, Ricardo Martinez, Shraddha Shirude, and I argue how ethnic studies and mathematics engage in reimagining what spaces of mathematics congenital in community, solidarity, and love might expect and experience like.
One of the ethos we describe in our newspaper is related to the concept of customs and solidarity, where we ascertain the following:
"Community and Solidarity in mathematics, as defined past ethnic studies, encounter mathematics every bit integral to activist movements for social justice. Ethnic studies is a process that connects learning to the community and to the existent world, acknowledging the situated, and trunk, and Commonage nature of learning and change. Mathematics learning is not only experienced cognitively; it is a procedure that has lived, engraved in students' bodies and memories, and shaped by our histories, ancestors, and communities." (Yeh, Martinez, Rezvi, Shirude, 2021, p. 82)
What if mathematics was embodied in the G-12 classroom infinite? What if information technology was poetic? What if it was seen equally beautiful past our club rather than something to overcome or get through in schooling? What if?
Francis Su (@mathyawp) discusses this in the quote below from his book, Mathematics for Man Flourishing:
Photograph Credit with permission of Francis Su
What if we celebrated and explored mathematics through art?
In this mail service, I offer one approach of doing so past exploring Islamic geometry with students that centers the idea of exploration, joy, and solidarity with Muslim students who accept and may continue to be experiencing an increasingly hostile climate due to racism, xenophobia, and white supremacy. As educators, information technology is our commonage responsibility to ensure that every kid that walks into our classroom space is welcomed and cared for, is seen and heard, and is celebrated in the fullness that they bring. Math class is no exception.
A scroll through the geometry common core standards most math teachers incorporate into their lesson plans reveals linguistic communication describing students exploring such concepts as symmetry, tessellation, congruency, similarity, and composition. What if art could lend itself in exploring these geometry standards? I describe below an example of this vision through the lens of Islamic geometry.
What practice you lot discover? What practise you wonder in the images above? The beautiful tile work you meet photographed here is from the AlHambra, the xiiith-century palace and fortress synthetic by Narsrid emir Mohammed ben Al-Ahmar. For more insight, John Jaworski'southward insightful book, A Mathematician'south Guide to the AlHambra was a rich resource for creating my lesson.
Students were and so invited to get on a virtual field trip in minor breakout rooms of the 600-twelvemonth-former Mosque of Sultan Barquq in Cairo. I encourage you to do the same. The link is remarkable, and students enjoyed being able to continue a field trip under COVID lockdown when I start delivered this lesson in the summer of 2020.
What patterns did y'all see? What geometries are outset to sally? Why practice some polygons tessellate and others practise not? Can we find a fashion to bring a mathematical lens to the beautiful art we've just seen?
Indeed, Maryam Mirzhakhani's daughter described her mother'south work every bit painting! The recently published children'southward book by Megan Reid and illustrated by Aaliya Jaleel celebrating Mirzhakhani, the outset Iranian and adult female Fields Medalist, is chockful of ways of agreement how math and fine art are intertwined.
These questions and more than were facilitated during this exploration, where students' curiosities were piqued by the artwork they had been exploring. The art leads to the mathematics. The mathematics leads to the art. In this way, they are continued. It is a conversation and an invitation to run across a subject area that has been sterilized by high-stakes testing into something anew.
Annie Perkins (@anniek_p) has a gorgeous serial of #mathartchallenges that she has curated on her website. The Islamic geometry lesson can exist found here: Islamic Geometry Lesson by: Sara Rezvi (@arsinoepi). For further inspiration and to try out some designs yourself with a simple compass and a ruler, Samira Mian's Islamic Geometry Art series is thoughtfully designed and intriguing. I hope you can experience the pleasure of exploring how math and fine art are deeply connected for yourself!
'Visual Prompts'
Gretchen Bernabei taught English/linguistic communication arts and reading in Texas for 34 years. You lot can discover her work at www.trailofbreadcrumbs.net:
I was having some trouble getting adolescents to write essays. My department was preparing for some country testing, giving students practice prompts similar "write near the importance of friendship" or "write an essay about the importance of honesty." Many of our students wrote, "Friendship is really of import," or "Honesty is really of import," and not much more.
Clearly, students weren't plunging into the deeper meanings of those statements; they weren't grappling with the abstruse; they weren't connecting the thoughts to their earth at all. I thought almost what those essays were asking students to do. They were asking students to write (and explain) an opinion; to state (and explore) a life lesson; to make (and substantiate) an argument.
And then I tried using artwork along with a "life lesson" statement. Like this:
With an epitome attached, they suddenly had plenty to say about the statement. At outset, I used fine art, paintings I could show on my document camera, so I moved to photographs. Some experimenting showed us that students like to call the sentences "truisms," and they could write enough of thoughts about those truisms. More experimenting taught us that showing the photos without the words was fifty-fifty better: Students liked to gaze at the photo, enquire themselves what it's about, and brand up a life lesson that fits. In this case, their truisms evolved from "everyone likes pets" to "sometimes an beast speaks more than clearly than a human" or "your domestic dog will never hurt your feelings." Their truisms became startlingly insightful.
There are so many royalty-gratuitous photos bachelor through government agencies that it'south like shooting fish in a barrel to discover powerful photos.
The words could be translated into any linguistic communication; the artwork transcends language.
A pupil reads the sentence out loud; the teacher asks, "Do yous remember that's true?" If they do, they write the sentence at the tiptop of their newspaper. If they don't, they revise the sentence and so that it's at present true for them.
Some more experimenting helped us develop what we now call the "11-minute essay." Recalling the cubing practise made popular by Elizabeth Cowan, we adjusted the directions for a timed piece of writing:
Instructions for the 11-Minute Essay
- Write the truism on your paper. For one minute, explain what it means. (Finish them after one minute.)
- Indent and look at your truism. Tin can y'all think of a moment from a movie when this sentence was true? Proper name that pic and tell how this sentence was true in it. Y'all take three minutes. If y'all can't think of what to write, just go along looking at the picture.
(Terminate them after three minutes.)
- Indent and look at your truism. Tin you think of a moment from a volume or story when this judgement was true? Proper name that story and tell how this judgement was truthful. You have three minutes. If yous can't think of what to write, just keep looking at the picture. (Stop them after three minutes.)
- Indent and await at your truism. How practice you personally know it'due south true? Tell one moment from your own feel when you saw this was true. If y'all can't think of what to write, merely keep looking at the moving-picture show. (Stop them subsequently 3 minutes.)
- What does all this leave you wondering about that sentence? Indent and start your last paragraph with the words, "I wonder …" or "This makes me wonder." Or start it any way y'all like. Yous have i minute.
Both students and adults often become surprised at what they produced in such a short corporeality of time. The directions helped guide and interpret onto the paper those thoughts which were already inside the writers. Only the photos helped the writers plunge into their ain experiences and beliefs.
Yous tin can detect more than visual prompts here and hither.
References:
Bernabei, Gretchen and Judi Reimer (2013). Fun-Size Academic Writing for Serious Learning: 101 Lessons and Mentor Texts. Corwin Literacy. Thousand Oaks, CA.
Bernabei, Gretchen (2008). Lightning in a Bottle. Trail of Breadcrumbs Press. San Antonio, Texas.
Cowan, Elizabeth. (1986). Writing. Scott, Foresman. Glenview, Sick.
Art & Scientific discipline
Jeremy Hyler is a middle school English and media-literacy teacher in Michigan. He has co-authored Create, Compose, Connect! Reading, Writing, and Learning with Digital Tools (Routledge/Center on Teaching), From Texting to Teaching: Grammar Instruction in a Digital Age, also as Ask, Explore, Write. Jeremy blogs at MiddleWeb and hosts his own podcast Middle School Hallways. He can exist found on Twitter @jeremybballer and at his website jeremyhyler40.com:
I worked closely with our art teacher on dissimilar projects to prove cantankerous-curricular connections for the students. While working across the hall from each other, we coordinated ii specific activities that went with the science curriculum in my district. Showtime, equally my students worked on growing radish plants while experimenting with variables and control, they also were learning about stomata and the procedure of photosynthesis.
Equally one of our activities, nosotros would gather different examples of leaves from around our school property. The art instructor would teach the students to exercise leaf rubbings in their physical-scientific discipline notebooks past placing the leaf behind the page and rubbing the pencil over the other side of it. It creates a rough sketch of the leaf, and so the students label the rubbings for identification purposes. Later (usually the side by side 24-hour interval), this would lead to a course discussion on the different species of plants that exist around our school's holding and peradventure why we have such an affluence of sure species. It is an easy cantankerous-curricular activity that allows students to be creative.
In improver to leaf rubbings and working on plant identification, the 8th form students participate in a projection chosen Salmon in the Classroom. During this projection, students raise salmon throughout the school year from an egg to what is called a fry. During this project, students learn about h2o quality, macroinvertebrates, and other species of fish that be in our waterways here in Michigan. At the end of the project, students have the opportunity to actively engage with these other species of fish when they release the salmon into a local creek.
One of the extensions of the project is for students to utilise pigment and rubber fish stamps of native species to create an imprint of the fish they chose. The paintings are and then hung on a classroom or hallway bulletin lath to aid younger course levels get excited virtually the Salmon in the Classroom Project. Information technology gives them something to wait forwards to in 8th course.
Art & History
Kelsey Pycior teaches social studies at Manville High Schoolhouse in central New Jersey:
I teach high school social studies, only art is my hobby. I think that we can employ art (drawings, paintings, music, poetry, etc.) in our daily lives to better express ourselves and connect with our larger communities. By the time students get to loftier schoolhouse, fine art class is often optional.
I endeavor to incorporate art multiple times per year in my courses. In my current school commune, I have encouraged students to express themselves and demonstrate evidence of learning through diverse fine art projects that are intertwined with what they are studying. My world history students take mitt drawn Instagram posts function-playing as the First, Second, and Third Estates of the French Revolution. Students have gotten on the floor and sketched fine art upside down, as though they were Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. They showed off their new knowledge of Renaissance art compared with Medieval art in this exercise while gaining appreciation for the talent of painters of that era.
Students have also created murals out of scraps of paper that they wrote Haiku poems on while we were studying Japan. U.S. History 2 students frequently create their own propaganda for topics such equally World State of war I, the Great Depression's New Bargain, and World State of war Ii. They've created illustrated ABC books well-nigh World War II topics and fifty-fifty designed graffiti that they would have painted on the Berlin Wall had they lived in that era. Students besides scout performances from the Harlem Renaissance, and nosotros trace it to modern music today.
A favorite action my U.Southward. History two students participate in is the assay of Vietnam War protestation songs. We listen to music, talk virtually the lyrics, and connect those to what we meet happening with the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and other rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s. Without the incorporation of art, history does not come up to life.
Thank you to Sara, Gretchen, Jeremy, and Kelsey for contributing their thoughts.
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