Visit #11: The Fours and the Sixes!

Hey there!

This week we were doing (can you guess??) multiplications again!!! This entire multiplication set has been exciting for me because I have been able to integrate so many different art forms with the children. On Friday, I went in and taught them about multiplication through dance. This idea actually originated in the 18th century (surprise history lesson for the students as well!) with dance cards. The idea was that at a formal ball, each lady would be given a dance card at the beginning of the event. Under each dance would be the name of the gentleman that she was supposed to partner with for the duration of the song. This meant that after each dance, she would need to go find each new partner and he would also need to find her. Now to teach this to children, I needed to change a few things: 1. The dance for them was less of a partner dance, and so anyone could have the match to their card, boy or girl. 2. instead of their partner's name on their card, the card contained either a multiplication table, or the answer to one and the students had to find the match to their math problem. And 3. the students were only allowed to look for their partners with their eyes, and not with their mouths. 

When I had taught the kids a little bit of the history behind the activity, I showed them how to do the waltz step and had them practice waltzing around the room. Since I didn't necessarily want them full on partner dancing, I only taught them a single person waltz step instead of the double. 

At the beginning of each dance, the students got into two equal lines and the two leaders handed out a card to each student (one line had answers, the other one had multiplication tables). Once everyone had a card, the music began and the students had to use the waltz step to get around the room to find their partner. Once found, the pair would waltz to the other side of the room and wait for everyone else to finish. The first couple to finish would become the leaders for the next dance. 

Here are some pictures of the students waltzing around looking for the answer to their math problems. 

A lot of them caught on very quickly and you can see in this picture the bent leg of most of them while they completed the up, down, down motion of the waltz step in 3/4 time. 

To keep things interesting, I brought a variety of different waltzes to play for them that required them to pay strict attention to the beat because many of them varied widely in tempo. I even brought in a waltz from the move "Frozen" that a lot of the students recognized quickly and were excited to dance to. 

This is a great assessment, which is why I waited until my last visit to bring it it for the children to experience. Instead of a large group all answering questions together, they had to answer the question by themselves in order to find their correct partner. For this exercise, I brought in the four multiplication tables, as well as the six multiplications, but of course you could supplement any multiplication table, or really any math problem depending on the needs of the students. I was happy to see that the children all responded very well to the activity and it was fun for them to discover which of their friends they would be paired with next. 

Thanks for reading! It's been a blast!

-Kyra