The kids seemed to enjoy the music and mathematics lesson. No comments on the blog, but it was our last day of classes before UN Day and our Spring break and we are new to blogging. Must try to keep it moving even though I fear I will struggle to catch my breath as we head towards one of our four reporting sessions of the school year.
The feedback received though was from parents the next day at our UN celebrations. One very excited parent told me about her son asking if she’d like to hear some music he’d composed. Then he showed her the sheet music and played some more. It was then he revealed that it had happened in mathematics. My schools arts department is fantastic and so we were supported by a range of them. For me I saw three different ways to compose and all of them had mathematics in them whether that was obvious to the composer or not. The first lesson was a little shakey as I was forgotten and stumbled through. We did compose, so it was a success, but I was a little dizzy due to fighting the flu and medicated. Youtube didn’t want to cooperate, but then students know all sorts of tricks and everything clicked if not in the predetermined order. Mathematics isn’t linear. Life isn’t linear and I am more than prepared to take risks and make some mistakes, some, mistakes in front of my students if it’s what I ask them to be prepared to do.
Before I began each lesson I told them I had never read a note of music before putting the lesson together but wanted to show them order of operations in the real world and music just made sense. My hunch was right so off we went. Our 85 minute long lessons were perfect for the one off lesson.
More than anything it was fun. I still have a handful of kids who dread mathematics, but I am going to win them over. Might be time for another TEDtalk.
They all just sat their first unit test. Questions were written by them in small groups in an attempt to prepare them for mathematics in unfamiliar contexts and also helping them think about how to prepare for a test. It’s not a trick, they should be able to predict content. After about three hours of marking 60+ tests I am pleased to say there was a lot of very good mathematics and thinking on the paper. Poor little things looked stressed leaving, so I emailed them to tell them well done.
Our next unit is data, patterns, averages and predictions. Weather will feature. Perhaps they won’t be so cross when the weather forecast isn’t all that accurate afterwards.
Can you match the graphs to the cities. Wonderful activity from Maths300.
#AoD happily wearing my inner geek on the outside 