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Saturday, September 24, 2011

Music and Math, a Melodious Combination!

Have you ever used music to help you learn something about math?  In our recent unit on geometry, we used a song about quadrilaterals to help us analyze different types of four sided shapes and determine their major characteristics.  Sing along with us and see if you can pick out the important characteristics of each quadrilateral.  Then, try your hand at the questions below; you can even send us a video of your answer!

1. What are the major types of quadrilaterals?
2. How are trapezoids different from parallelograms?
3. What are the different types of parallelograms and their distinguishing characteristics?
4. Can a square can be a rhombus, and can a rhombus be a square?



The following three problems stumped some of my students.  Could you share your thinking on how to solve them?  Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas to help our class! :)





PS. What songs have helped you learn important math concepts?  Would you share your ideas so we could use them in our classroom!  We love for music to bring our room alive, especially the songs that help us learn :)
Posted by Anonymous at 3:41 AM
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6 comments:

  1. MattSeptember 24, 2011 at 11:12 AM

    I know that Peter Weatherall has a few videos regarding geometry. An example for younger students:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbR_rakilds

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  2. Patti GraysonSeptember 24, 2011 at 12:38 PM

    This is so much fun! Can I show your video to my 4th graders? We will be studying quadrilaterals soon and this would be an enormous help! Could you provide the lyrics to the song? Songs are great to help learning. In English, we were learning about conjunctions, so I couldn't help but play the Schoolhouse Rock video, "Conjunction, Junction, What's Your Function?" You are lucky to have a teacher that makes learning so much fun! Our class (@hragrayson) is also following yours on Twitter. Thanks for sharing your learning and great ideas!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jodi JSeptember 24, 2011 at 1:00 PM

    My students love "The Polygon Song" on you tube

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousSeptember 24, 2011 at 1:26 PM

    Matt, Patti, and Jodi, Thank you SOOO much for your input on our class blog. We certainly will check out your suggestions for songs!

    Absolutely Patti, please use our video. My students will feel very honored they could help other students learn. I will send you the lyrics as soon as I get to school on Monday. Let us know how your geometry learning goes :)

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  5. Mrs. YollisSeptember 30, 2011 at 1:46 PM

    Dear Students,

    I loved your song and will be sharing it with my students when we start geometry in a few months! Often, a song will stick in your head and really help you learn!

    Here is a link to a wiki with some math movies we've made. One is about polygons in general
    (Circle tries to get involved with the polygon movie. Too bad she doesn't know she's NOT a polygon!) and others about how to tell the difference between all the different types of quadrilaterals! You might find them useful!

    Geometry Math Movies!

    Thanks again for a great post!

    Your friend,
    Mrs. Y♥llis
    California

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousOctober 4, 2011 at 10:35 AM

    Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    We LOVE your Math movie page, but we could only see the movie, Name That Angle. All the other movie titles showed up but not the videos. We will have to check back later to see if we can view them again.

    Has your class ever read the book The Greedy Triangle? Your adventure with Circle trying to join the polygons reminded us of this book. If you haven't read it, check it out when you study geometry!

    Thank you so much for posting on our blog!

    ReplyDelete

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