Week 8 activity: Mathematical poems

This week was very cold, so I had to stay inside for most of it. The poem below represents me looking at the land through the window.

Dreaming through the window on a cold Wednesday

Wind blowing over spirits

Blowing wind spirits over

Blowing spirits wind over

Spirits blowing over wind

Spirits over blowing wind

Over spirits wind blowing

Over wind spirits blowing

Wind over blowing spirits

Wind blowing over spirits

The Gift of Love

A

hand

Holding

my cold hand

On a summer day

The sun shines through the gray clouds

Firstly, I really liked to be able to connect my whole self (body, mind, and emotions) with mathematics because we have so few opportunities to do so. Furthermore, I enjoy poetry and I am always amazed by how poets can be impressively creative with the patterns they use to write and express different meanings. Before this week, I never made the connections between these patterns and doing mathematics, so it was an enlightening moment.

Secondly, after trying out some poems, I discovered some mathematical thinking processes that can be involved in poetry. I had to guess and check, count, try out and verify my work, work systematically and find an efficient way to record my trials. Sadly, I used my eraser a lot, so I do not have all the attempts, but you can see in this picture my original poem.

I decided that I did not like some of the combinations with the part ‘a tree’, so I started the first few lines again. And then, I changed the different parts and tried different combinations (I erased a lot) for the first 3 lines and finally liked one enough to continue writing the whole poem.

To make a connection with my article this week, the process that I used is a demonstration of how I used knowledge (patterns) in a dynamic way: using it to carry a meaning, trying out ideas and verifying them, simplifying it to make my work easier, mentally visualizing the pattern, etc.

Finally, I believe that many of my students would like to do an activity like this one (writing a mathematical poem). Like me, they would like to feel human while doing mathematics. Also, like mentioned in Writing and reading multiplicity in the universe: engagement with mathematics through poetry, poems can be a way to feel safe while engaging with mathematics (Radakovic et al., 2018). I have many students who demonstrate math anxiety while problem-solving, even if the problem is open and have multiple ways to get to the answer. Making them engage with mathematics through a poem could help them not feel this anxiety while doing mathematics, at least for this activity. Finally, poems can also be a way to connect mathematics to students’ world (Radakovic et al., 2018). In grade 9-10-11, there are not that many concepts that we can connect to my students’ daily life. Using mathematics within poetry could give them a rare chance to make this connection.

Reference:

Radakovic, N., Jagger, S., & Jao, L. (2018). Writing and reading multiplicity in the uni-verse: Engagements with mathematics through poetry. For the Learning of Mathematics, 38(1), 2-6.