Geometry Galore!

Oh, the vocabulary!  Oh, the teamwork!  START offered up so many geometry challenges, and we tackled them all!

A very long triangular prism

A two-person sphere

Can we create a three-D shape?

Our individual 3-D rectangular prisms created a whole class 2-D feet circle!

Musical Math

Have you noticed math in the music you love?  Thanks to our amazing START volunteers, we are noticing more and more musical math patterns.

We got to experience an instrument most of us have never seen up close.  Comment if you know what it is!

We tried out all sorts of patterns with quarter notes, half notes, whole notes, and eighth notes.  The third graders made some fabulous connections with our current fraction unit.

START coordinator Mary Gaetz was visiting and commented that our class “is fearless, plunging enthusiastically into new learning!” What a compliment!  For many, parts of the note reading activities were new and challenging, and it was so encouraging to hear that we are living out our growth mindset strategies in visible ways!

Each group had the opportunity to write their own song and perform it with all sorts of instruments!

As we joke every day, “Math is everywhere!”

Patterns!

What a kickoff!  Our marvelous START volunteers gave us so much to think about with their integrated lesson on patterns this week.  Alexandra, Steffi, and Amanda tied numbers to movements we chose so we could combine the numbers in a variety of crazy patterns.  Small groups designed their own rhythms and sounds to layer patterns together.  We even got to know each other better using math vocabulary.

Introducing our Spring START Volunteers!

 

Math is everywhere, and our three new START volunteers are full of ideas for enhancing our study of math with the arts.  Notice they made a pyramid to give you a sneak peek, and we can’t wait to see what happens with patterns, symmetry, and shapes over the next six weeks!

Steffi (top of pyramid) is a junior from Connecticut.  In her major of human geography and public policy, she ties math and art together with cartography.  An example of one of her maps is locating food deserts in a city by mapping the supermarkets.  She might map things such as where health care centers are located to be sure people have access to care or how far it is for people in a certain rural area to get to stores.  She gets excited about using her field of expertise to help people.  Steffi gave the NY Times “Upshot” as an example of the type of mapping she works on.

Amanda (right) is a junior from Connecticut as well.  She majors in economies and quantitative social sciences and applied statistics.  One of the aspects of math that gets her excited is using lots of data to understand the world.  An example of her work might be studying how people interact and how friendships might affect depression.  She also uses math as she plays saxophone in the Dartmouth Jazz Band.

Alexandra (left) is a freshman from New York.  She is pre-med and has always loved math.  A teacher who used socratic style instruction in high school really sparked her interest.  She also uses her math skills to sing in a Christian a cappella group on campus.