Teaching Math and Dance....
If we can do it, you can do it!

A collaborative process to greatness.

Advance warning: this is the most reading you will have to do in this book!

It's all about the process.

The inquiry process, the collaborative process, the creative process, the problem solving process, and how all are interconnected to form the learning process.

From across KPRDSB, we were a group of 18 educators in 8 schools who wanted to learn how to use the creative process to educate ourselves and engage our students. That meant a lot of risk-taking on our part in order to encourage students to do the same but Mary Walker Hope, the Arts Resource teacher, had our backs and supported us all the way.

Through integrating Math and the Arts, we engaged our students as inquirers, collaborators, creators, problem solvers, artists, dancers and mathematicians.

We began our journey from a creatively curious stance and with humility. We inquired, persevered and solved. We learned how to teach math through dance and dance through math. We discovered through our collaborative inquiry that math, dance, language, music, and art are as interconnected as the processes we use to understand, solve and create. This is our story.

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Malke Rosenfeld and her book "Math on the Move" were the catalysts for this journey, specifically Chapters 4 & 5.

We were given permission to translate Malke's resources for our french immersion/extended french classes.

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We were also about to find out our bodies were our manipulatives!

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Patterning, transformational geometry and spatial reasoning are just some of the math curriculum expectations addressed through movement. Malke's practices encourage us to present our learners with a challenge at the outset of the creative process. As students work together to understand the problem, they experiment, create, combine and eventually transform their work as they incorporate the feedback they receive and reflect upon and work towards a solution. Practice and risk-taking are the keys to success.

It's all about knowing the lingo.

In order to participate fully and build confidence in the learning activities, students need to understand and be able to use the vocabulary for the elements of dance in either language. Enter the "Name Game".

Directions for Name Dance

Who says thinking inside the box isn't creative?

Students calculate how to make and tape out their dance squares in the classroom. This is a math lesson on its own.

Again, the students need to understand and use the vocabulary of the movement variables so after critically analysing the movements they see in a percussive dance video, we give the students time to orient themselves in the squares and figure out how they can move in the squares.
They quickly figure out all the movement variables on our chart. We call these pattern attributes in math.

Pattern A: It's All About Taking That First Step

Students are given time to experiment with movement variables and begin the process of creating a four beat pattern we call Pattern A.

Throughout the process teachers are introducing, modelling and referring to dance/math vocabulary.

Reflection Journal Idea

Pattern A Congruent: It's All About Being the Same

Focus on sameness. Ensure you are dancing the same as your partner.

The use of "demonstration squares" during the process allows groups to get immediate feedback while they were creating and experimenting. They help all students clarify their understanding of "dancing the same".

Matching up foot, movement and position one beat at a time does the trick.