Dance and Math?

     In every school board in Ontario Mathematics is an integral part of their educational foundation and their overall program. In my experiences I have seen just how important Mathematics is to education in Ontario creating a multitude of opportunities for professional development in Mathematical pedagogy. Throughout my own education as a teacher candidate I have had multiple courses that taught me how to teach Mathematics in various ways, but in my recent Dance education class I learned something new. If I am honest with myself I would have never pictured Math and Dance working well together to create meaningful learning, but I have seen that this can happen. During class we were asked to create symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes with our bodies accompanied by music and fabric scarfs. Here students not only get the chance to move around creatively, but also must think about the knowledge they have of shapes. As we moved from doing this individually, to partners, and then in small groups this became increasingly challenging as we created symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes using movement. To add on to this we also talked about the properties of shapes and how that should be included in the dance. I believe that a teacher could provide even more to this lesson by asking students to create certain shapes and display the characteristics that makes that shape unique.

     In another activity we used dance part of learning probability where we rolled dice and the number we received represented an action that we must perform. Additionally, we then had to find a creative way as a group to represent the numbers we rolled. Here students are learning about the probability of rolling certain numbers as the teacher leads the discussion and then must think collaboratively with a group about how they would represent this. Students must make predictions, communicate with their bodies, and work with their classmates in order to complete the activity.

     One lesson I saw during my placement was a teacher getting the students to demonstrate their knowledge of geometric transformations through Dance. For this activity their dance had to include rotations, reflections, and translations using the movement of their bodies. I believe this is a unique way to teach these concepts and a great way for students to consolidate their knowledge or to be introduced to what each of these motions are.

    Overall, I have learned that Dance can be used as a creative way to teach Mathematics where instead of students showing their learning on paper, they must use movement to display what they know. For this, students must apply the creative and mathematical processes in order to complete the tasks developing the child as a whole. Below is a resource I found with a plethora of ways that Dance (and other Arts) can be used in order to make Math come alive.

https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/matharts/#.WtkQQy7wbIU