Blog Response #9: Dancing Euclidean Proofs

 From my most recent two-week practicum, one of the issues that has put me in deep thought is finding ways for my students to move around in my math class. This thought started mainly because during my time teaching, I found that students were incredibly unmotivated and were becoming restless, especially during longer class times that lasted for 75 minutes. So, while I was watching the video on Dancing Euclidean Proofs (Gerofsky, 2018), one thing that made me stop and think was that this could be a great idea for me to incorporate in my own math classroom. Finding ways to connect math and dance or other art forms could be a great way for my students to engage with math. It would be a new and refreshing way to engage with mathematical concepts. Another thought that made me stop and think was the fact that developing the dance steps to reflect each step in the proof must have taken a lot of time and thought which required a lot of patience. This process most definitely reflects the time and thought taken to create mathematical proofs. Therefore, this can be a good reminder for the students that patience is required in the learning process which embodies one of the First Peoples Principles of Learning that learning involves patience and time. 

When I reflect on the time when my group also performed an activity like the Dancing Euclidean Proof, I remember our group being very apprehensive towards it, I think because we realized that this was something new to us, but at the same time, it was cool to see how our group was able to come up with some quick moves to reflect the Euclidean Proof. What was exciting is how math can be represented through an art form which is a refreshing way to learn math. The math content remains in one’s memory because we use both mind and body to learn the math. 

I think that if this idea is included in the math classroom, it will be a cool an exciting way for kids to learn math, mainly because it is active and because it is new and refreshing, but I can see some challenges too. Like our group, the kids could be nervous about it because it is something they may have never seen before, and it is something that requires them to get out of their comfort zone. However, I think because the kids are using both mind and body in this activity, they will remember what they learned for the long-term. 

 

References 

Gerofsky, S. [Susan Gerofsky]. (2018, December). Dancing Euclidean Proofs. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/330107264 

Milner, S.J., Duque, C.A., & Gerofsky, S. (2019). Dancing Euclidean Proofs: Experiments and Observations in Embodied Mathematics Learning and Choreography. 239-246 

Comments

  1. Amanda FritzlanDecember 19, 2022 at 2:32 PM

    I love that you are thinking of the movement, or lack there of, students bodies. I also like that you are making connections between the FPPL and the ways that artistic practices cannot be fit into a linear sense of time. I hope that you have fun with your students trying out some math with movement.

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