Seeing Math

As a teacher (giving the state test) I feel a kind of end of the year vibe- though I have weeks to go.
5 I think, maybe 4.
That's plenty of time to teach. So I've been thinking about what to hit hard-math mostly.
Math inspired me this year though a lot of what I did better I'll hope NEXT year I really take on.
Because math will be a visual process from here on  out in my room.

I've fallen in love with a person who makes YouTube videos on math for all of us really. After school I compulsively watch them thinking how much I'd like them tuned a bit more to the 3rd grade, but how I like them anyway; we showed one today they loved after testing. After those tests left the room, of course.

They are genius videos.
Basically because she's charming, loves math, cares, and draws.

So the person may be known to you, once you go see her pages you'll be off mine for sure.
Her name is Vi Hart. Or I think it is her name. My daughter calls her adorkable.

So I showed this video today. One of my students has discovered patterns on the piano, left and right hand and he was so mesmerized as I said to him, look at what we are seeing. Patterns.
He then drew what he's been playing for me- much as she draws these lines in the music.




She uses art, She uses music, because she understands the deep connectivity and meaning in these languages of understanding.

I asked my 3rd graders to tell me what they learned, remembered, thought of this Youtube.
I got interesting responses:

I saw music like a braid weaving in and out.

How did they show it at the same time?

The colors were very important.

High notes went up.

I could see the patterns in music, I never knew that.

It's harmony we were watching.

They were busily taking down the website information to check out at home- because there were many they desperately wanted to watch. I know they want to see the one on candy dots.
Since we are very visual I think they'll watch.
Yes I do.

I, myself loved her riff on the 12 Days of Christmas.



I wrote a poem about Hexaflexagons so I also loved this:



My head spins actually listening to all the delightful things in this, and is flooded visually, but especially having someone that knows math, to get to see them use art, to teach adults and children about HOW TO TEACH MATH. Score, high five, rock on and I bow.
Wish grade levels could spend time on-line on something worthwhile like this. Common Core will demand it. Even in poverty schools with narrowing as an anthem.

Oh and she's being added to the Kahn Academy. Which I've asked to access for years now.
There is a lot to teaching math, but these enthused me.


Oh, oh, oh

I forget why I got to this.

In my class a student drew a massive page of these roses that I think of as a very naive image I see in art here. Usually starting with 5 petals. Ending up in a tat.
So I was talking about this at home, her images and the math I found in them, and remembered a link to a video I had watched briefly some weeks ago when we were studying and researching symmetry at home so I could go teach a visual arts symmetry connection-for my umbrella project.

That video was really about how plants grow. Very timely because I'm thinking of studying and drawing pine cones and other Fibonacci organic forms all summer. And my students have been trying to internalize why angles should matter to them.

So here was the video I shared with my student-she loves math and loved this-seeing her flowers and her doodles right at the video's start...her jaw dropped:




Enjoy, Vi Hart!