This Friday the hallways of our school are going to be transformed into a Geometry Museum. Parents have been invited to take a walk around our gallery to see all of the interesting and creative work that students have done.
As a staff we decided to have math as a focus this school year to help us increase student learning. The first thing that we did was have a 'Math Assembly' which was extremely successful and resulted in some amazing conversations between student and teachers alike. There is no question that everyone in our school learned from this activity.
Here is a link to the post I did on the 'Math Assembly': Math Assembly: A Success!!
The next area we decided to focus on was Geometry and to have teachers look at the big ideas in the curriculum for their grade. We took part in a PLC Day where we discussed where we were in regards to our math goals for the year and to move forward to the next part of our plan.
It was amazing to listen to the discussion and to hear the enthusiasm of our teachers as they brainstormed what direction we should be headed in with our geometry goals and student work. From the discussion came the idea to pull from the Arts Curriculum and the Mathematics Curriculum for our next focus.
THE IDEA
Turn our school into a geometry museum for a gallery walk.
THE RESULTS
Every teacher and student would dive into the curriculum and produce a piece of work that was cross-curricular. Parents would be involved by coming into the school and seeing what their children have created.
Some of the resources we used are listed below:
- Guide to Effective Instruction: Geometry and Spacial Sense K-3
- Guide to Effective Instruction: Geometry and Spacial Sense 4-6
Once the Geometry Museum and the gallery walk is complete I'll share the results!
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Tim, I really like what you did here. At our school, we're focusing on math, but we're also looking at integrating The Arts into other subject areas. This sounds like a perfect combination of both.
ReplyDeleteMy only real concern is that our new Arts curriculum is really about more problem-solving within The Arts and reflection on The Arts. You should rarely now see similar visual arts pieces in the same classroom or school, as students are working through design challenges (and hence, the results should be different).I know that in the past, using The Arts and Math, students would take pre-made shapes and create pictures with them or use tracers to cut and paste a shape picture of some sort. This is not considered The Arts any more. How are your teachers using the new Arts curriculum to address this challenge? How did the teachers have students reflect on The Arts and on Math? I'd love to hear if you have any further information to share.
Thanks!
Aviva
www.weinspirefutures.com
Hi Avia! Thanks for the comment. Each grade level did a different type of art that the teacher was able to link to the math curriculum. That way every class did something totally different. This was a vehicle to get everyone really looking at the Arts curriculum and the Geometry and Spatial Sense curriculum. With that being said, what I really wanted to do was get parents into the school and take a look around and the amazing work being sone here. Plus, if they could have a good talk with their parents about what they are learning that was a bonus.
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