MATH IN THE ART ROOM? HECK, YEAH!

Research indicates that using an interdisciplinary or integrated curriculum provides opportunities for more relevant, less fragmented, and more stimulating experiences for learners. In EIM’s experience, integrating math curriculum into other subject areas is a wonderful opportunity to engage students. Here are what some EIM partnership schools are doing to integrate math across the curriculum:

• Literacy Coach Andrea Smith and Math Coach Marlene Boone are teaming at John Muir to integrate reading comprehension strategies into mathematical word problem solving. The response from teachers and students so far is encouraging.
• Van Asselt Elementary recently produced a family math night event that married music and math. Staff and 5th grade students used fractions to explain the quarter, half and whole notes. Each classroom developed their own eight beat rhythms in which all participants later shared in the cafeteria in a rousing finale.
• TT Minor’s former art teacher, Shellwyn Badger, took every opportunity to integrate math into student art. Whether cutting geometric shapes to make a quilt or mural or measuring string and ribbons, Ms. Badger helped students receive further reinforcement of math skills and concepts.
• PE teachers at many EIM partner schools have been reinforcing math skills and concepts by skip counting scores, measuring distance with pedometers, heartbeats with heart rate monitors as well as playing creative fitness games like odd/even tag and fitness bingo.

For your next family night, consider combining math and science or asking your enrichment teachers to get on board supporting math skills and concepts. The more students are exposed to the integration of math in other subject areas, the more aware they become that math is relevant, fun and part of everyday life. Stumped for ideas? Many other examples of integrating math across the curriculum can be found at the NCTM website, http://www.nctm.org/

INTEGRATING MATH: A Personal View from EIM Head Teacher, Dave Gardner

Historically, one of the problems besetting math instruction has been treating it as if it were a subject in isolation, divorced from all other curriculum areas and even from the “real world”. Math is not a disjointed, discrete collection of facts, figures, algorithms, formulas and procedures to be memorized, regurgitated and then forgotten; math is all about making connections. Good math instruction demands that we do just that when we teach.

A good example of making connections across the curriculum is present in the 4th and 5th grade Everyday Math textbook: each book contains an extensive atlas (a world atlas for 4thgrade, a U.S. atlas for 5thgrade.) During the course of the year, students are asked to plan a trip using the atlas. Do these fantasy trips involve math? Of course. Students have to calculate distances, dates and times and must apply their knowledge of map scale. And doing this activity in a small group (another math best practice) provides opportunities for students to present their mathematical ideas to their peers, and, in turn, listen to the ideas of others. It’s an opportunity to challenge and to justify.

Another example I can provide is from my own career. When I taught 5th grade U.S. History, I integrated math and geography into the history curriculum For instance, students were to select five important Civil War battles and find the total number of casualties. Then, I asked them to use a Washington state atlas to find towns and cities whose population equaled (or came close to) the total of battlefield casualties. Aside from the skills involved, it brought home a little more forcefully what it means when, say, 17,000 people are killed in battles. I also asked them to use map scale to determine the distance covered by Sherman’s march to the sea. Integrating math in this manner (and you are limited only by your imagination), makes math more relevant and more meaningful to students. They see that math is a useful tool; something they can use to help them understand the world better.

TEACHER CHALLENGE

A square brick wall is one row of bricks higher and one column of bricks narrower than another wall. How many more bricks are there in the square wall?

Email responses to jenniferga@eimath.org and you may win a game for your classroom.

Congratulations to Coe Elementary 4/5 teacher Joe Bailey-Fogarty for winning the February teacher challenge!

WEB RESOURCES

Here are some great websites from NCTM, (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) which you may find helpful to you and your students.

• Math Starter of the Day offers a daily math problem, ranging from puzzles, speed tests and creative ideas to start math lessons.
  www.transum.org/starter
• Time Monsters offers interactive online lessons and quizzes about time.
  www.timemonsters.com
• Numbers Made Meaningful provides free, teacher tested math stories and games based on the story Trouble with Zero, for Pre-K through grade 1.
  www.numbersmademeaningful.com