I made an attempt at a braided bellringing PH4 poem this week, as discussed in Gerofsky (2020), and really enjoyed the process. Coming up with the four initial words was a little bit tricky, so I just went with what was in front of me - a steaming cup of coffee - something that has been a consistent staple of mine through all the big life changes of the last four years. Reliably and consistently, I can sit at the table and enjoy a cup of coffee every morning.
I loved the interplay of the four words as they weaved through the page, and how I could intersperse punctuation or emphasize different words to take different meaning out of each line. Line 6, morning ritual, caffeine-fueled is just slightly different than line 1, caffeine-fueled morning ritual, but gets the exact same point across.
I like the idea of putting something like this on a coffee cup, maybe with some alterations, punctuation, or maybe a different word that works better in certain lines - does anyone have any suggestions? I showed my wife my work as she does sublimation onto ceramic mugs and she said she "didn't get it"... haha.
---
Radakovic and Jagger engage with a poem by Sakaki, which has a structure built around concentric circles and increasing scale (1 - 10 - 100 - 1000 - 10 000). Mathematical poetry is an interesting intersection that I've never explicitly thought of before, but makes total sense. Any time I've examined poetry with my students, our work and attention is rooted in the math of the poem; how many stanzas in this poem? How many syllables in this haiku? Poems are a great way to see the relationship between literary works and math.
The authors recognize an important personal connection between authentic mathematics and poetry. Personal expression, routine, and playing with the words contributed to the authenticity and relatability of the work. This approach challenges the formal approach to poetry interpretation, which allows for a differing perspective on students' work.
I shared some mathematical poetry with my students this week and we had fun picking out the words and phrases that we recognized from math. There was one poem, in particular, that tied together some of our work around fractions, which I'll share here.
At lunchtime, Thomas had to share,
with a friend a juicy pear.
He cut it using extra care,
and left two pieces - that seemed fair.
When he was done, he had to laugh,
now each boy had exactly half.
The next day Thomas went to tea,
with two others - that made three.
They wanted to share evenly,
the biggest sandwich they could see.
It was cut without a word,
and each boy saw they had a third.
Thomas and three friends dropped by,
hungry for a pizza pie.
They decided they would try,
equal pieces for each guy.
Thomas happily reports,
that each boy got a perfect fourth.
- Author unknown
Florian Mass, a data engineer who runs the blog at https://www.fpgmaas.com/ has a series on poetry and data which is fascinating, where he analyzes poetic meter of one of Reddit's "top" poets. Check it out if you're interested!
Question for thought: How might the inclusion of poetry and specifically mathematical poetry impact the teaching of math in a diverse setting?
Hi Malcom! PH4 poems are certainly new to me, so it was helpful and interesting to read about how you designed yours. Ah, what would we do without coffee/tea…Cool idea about putting it on a mug. We have a Cricut at school but the sublimation would work so much better.
ReplyDeleteI’m not teaching this year, so I don’t have the opportunity to share with students. I think it’s great you did this with yours! As soon as I started reading that poem, I began to visualize the situations begin described. I think some students would benefit from sketching out what is being explained.
Thinking about the question you pose, in my experience, math teachers (the former me included) tend to shy away from what makes us uncomfortable. I would have never thought to include poetry in any of my previous math classes. As you mention, with such diversity in classes, we teach students from so many different backgrounds who bring varying life experiences, interests and reservations. Connecting math to anything else, poetry or otherwise, provides an opportunity to reach more students and hopefully value their strengths and interested, leading to increased engagement and confidence.
Hi Malcolm,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the question you raised “How might the inclusion of poetry and specifically mathematical poetry impact the teaching of math in a diverse setting’’. Throughout this course I have been thinking about diversity and how this way of thinking about math fits into creating an inclusive classroom setting. My thoughts so far are that teaching students about the connection between poetry and mathematics is exposing them to a different way of showing what they know. Most inclusive classrooms follow some principles of UDL, one of them being for students to have choice. If all students are exposed to this as a way of knowing then it provides the opportunity for the students who feel passionate about the arts or poetry to show their learning in this way and for the other learners to know about it but not be expected to use it.