Teachers teach math using art
A look at television news over the last few weeks would have us believe that the nation’s teachers are spending the summer in protest. A few perhaps, but a significant number are actually busy improving their performance in the classroom…as News 5’s Patrick Jones found out today at St. John’s College.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
These primary school teachers are brushing up on their art and craft skills. But more than just putting pencil to paper or adding paint and Crayola colours to drawings, these men and women are learning how to use art to teach mathematics and science. Doctor Cynthia Bickley-Green of the art department at East Carolina University is the guest instructor for the course.
Dr. Cynthia Bickley-Green, Professor, East Carolina U.
“Content integration to help children apply math and science concepts in an art class to give them more experience. You can teach a lesson in mathematics, but you don’t necessarily repeat it over and over again in practical situation. So when you are in an art class, you can use your ruler to measure, you can coordinate systems on three dimensional forms, you can do things in a practical way that you don’t do in math class.”
Antonio Rivero, Teacher, Sarteneja Nazarene School
“Well like sometimes you show them the drawing of a solid, like a quadrilateral being a rectangle or square and just by looking at the diagram sometimes they don’t understand which one is the back which one is the front. But by drawing and painting different shades on it, it helps them to understand. Also, they can develop their own nets on them and open them, and so that will help them to find surface area or even to help them find perimeter area on a simple two dimensional figure.”
With the recent Primary School Examinations indicating that mathematics continues to be problematic for school children, this new approach to teaching the subject is a welcome tool. Teacher Dacia Tillett of Crooked Tree Government School is one of many who can’t wait for the new school year to begin to try this new approach.
Dacia Tillett, Teacher, Crooked Tree Government School
“We used to teach art only as a single subject in the curriculum. We used to use like an art guide, just to teach them how to draw, make collage and use things from their environment. So now we are learning that we could actually apply in science and math. We have worked with solid figures, geometrical shapes and children can actually make their own shapes.”
And a couple of children are already getting a leg up on their classmates with the new idea. Although this little girl was more preoccupied today with drawing a scene from her rural community of Crooked Tree, everyday for the past week a group of about forty primary-schoolers have been coming in so the teachers can get practical experience, while the resource person is available for critical analysis.
Dr. Cynthia Bickley-Green
“It should be very useful to use art, because art gives the children a tactile, kinaesthetic experience, that is if they are making a clay form and you say to them, I want the clay form to have a wall that’s half and inch thick, how much is half an inch between your index and your thumb. That’s a tactile experience of measurement. You can’t take a ruler and cut that clay and say yes you got half an inch, so it’s that tactile kinaesthetic experience that gives them more memory. The more brain cells, the more neural connections you make, the easier it is to learn something.”
Melissa Perez, Teacher, Sarteneja Nazarene School
“First of all I am learning how to integrate from one subject to another. For example in this lesson we can integrate science, social studies, math together with art and I think that children will enjoy it because most of them love arts.”
But while that love of art is expected to shed more light on an otherwise dark world of math for students, teachers are also getting a better grasp of the basics of the art of turning lines into pictures.
David Anderson, Art Teacher, St. John’s College
“Well the idea behind teaching primary school teachers, for one they know what they want. Two, they are more mature. So if I might use this analogy, they are like dry sponges, they soak up everything or all the bit of knowledge that I as the teacher have to bestow upon them. So working with primary school teachers for me is pretty easy because the influence is being extended beyond this art centre. So whatever they learn here, the idea is for them to take that and apply it within their daily schedule at school.”
The idea is to get teachers to think outside of the box. Whether that move will serve to further confuse students or help to erase the shadowy hues from the world of math for primary school students, we’re not sure. But at least it looks like fun. Patrick Jones, for News 5.
The art classes are sponsored by S.J.C. and are being held at the institution’s art centre on the main campus in West Landivar.
