Incorporating Art in a Math Class

A piece of art that I found in the UGA Museum of Art was this stained glass piece depicting St. George and the Dragon done by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The complete description read, "Window depicting St. George and the Dragon, ca. 1880-1920, by Louis Comfort Tiffany and studio." Since my area of specialization is math, I was trying to think about how you could use this piece of art to also teach math concepts. There are many geometrical shapes within the stained glass that could be talked about and discussed. You could print out copies of the picture and ask students to find as many different shapes as they can and then have them discuss with a partner the different shapes that they found and also discuss what it is about that shape that makes it what it is. For example, “I found this square. I know that is a square because it has four equal straight side and four right angles.”

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I was also looking at as a way to incorporate and talk about fractions. Within the chest plate of the figure displayed, there are three main colors that are all of equal or similar shape and size. There are shades of green, yellow, and orange. As a teacher, you could discuss how together, all of these parts make up the chest plate and that the chest plate is the unit amount or whole. Then you could have the students find the fractions that each color make of the whole/unit amount, which is the entire chest plate. So, if there are 100 pieces that make up the chest plate and 21 of them are shades of yellow, then yellow is 21/100 of the chest plate. You could also lead a discussion about decimals and percentages because 21/100 is also 21% of the chest plate or .21 of the chest plate. You can have your students find these fractions, decimals, and percentages by printing out copies of the art and giving it to them. Once they have determined what each color makes of the whole, they can share with a partner their findings and how they find each fraction and then converted that into decimals and percentages.

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Book Clubs

One thing that I have found interesting about the book club that we have been doing, is that our book actually goes better with a different subject than the one that it was pitched for. Hidden Figures was pitched as a book that would be good for a math class, but as we have been reading through it, it seems like it would fit better for a social studies class to talk about civil rights and women’s rights. However, your team of teachers could get together and assign this book as a reading to discuss multiple subjects, which I think could be a fun way to incorporate the book club in all of the classes. For social studies it is heavily weighted with civil rights and women’s rights issues that can be discussed in class. For science, there are a lot of physics references that could be discussed. And for math you can also talk about the math involved with the physics as well as some of the other mathematical references (although there is less than we thought there would be.) It could be a fun way for students to read a book for all of their classes and discuss in each of them, how it applies to each subject and dive deeper into the class content that is in the book. My area of emphasis is math and I don’t think that I would do a book club in my math class, but in other classes, I think that it would be great. I like reading and discussing the content with my groupmates and I think the students would enjoy it also. Plus, reading is good for students and if we can create a fun book club assignment and let them pick the books (like we did in class), I think they will be excited to read the book and hopefully have fun doing it which could be beneficial in them developing a love for reading. Also, allowing them to see how the class content is relative in the real world. My other area of emphasis is social studies, and I think that I would use it in that class because certain books could be heavily weighted with material that lines up directly with the curriculum material.

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Strategy Lesson Reflection

After conducting the strategy lesson today, I thought that it went really well because it was a fun, interactive activity and I think the student’s really enjoyed it. I think it is a fun review game that can be a fun activity to implement in my future classes. I liked the one adjustment that we made at the last minute, to switch up how the game is played. The switch allowed every student to participate equally. The challenging thing for me and the one thing that I didn’t do well, was walking around the classroom to monitor. I did when the game was being played, but when I was presenting, I found myself in “presentation” mode rather than “teacher” mode. If this was a middle school classroom, I would need to be walking around the classroom for classroom management purposes. I also feel that I could have explained the game a little better. One thing I learned was that as a teacher, you need to be ready and willing to make adjustments. We were prepared to play the game two different ways and ultimately decided to play it in pairs rather than groups. I think that in the end, that was the right move, but being prepared to do it both ways allows you to make adjustments if you feel that you need to.            

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