Tuesday, February 26, 2008
What Rhymes With "Calculus?"
posted by Q6 at 7:36 PM
Way back when, I was always the teacher that liked to think outside the box. (No, that's not true. I didn't even acknowledge the existence of the box, really.) I loved the concept of cross-curricular lessons. Teaching English and Public Speaking was great, but it was nice to spread my wings and take on some of the other subjects--it made me feel more like a teacher. I knew one English teacher who taught Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, and crossed in the science lessons so everyone understood the DNA aspect of things. Let's face it: crossing Math and Science is easy; but cross English and Science, and you're on to something. I sometimes wondered if the elective courses tried the same thing; so when I ran across the Flicker Song Chart Pool, I was pleasantly surprised. Music, and Math.




The whole thing took me back to one of my favorite lessons; it never really worked with the results I wanted, but it might have if I had ever taught Honors-level classes. The theory was designed to make the pen-ultimate crossover: English and Math. (Yeah, yeah, meter in poems and such. This was SO much cooler.) Math uses its own vocabulary, its own language--most subjects do, which makes this accessible to a lot of teachers. To use the language of Mathematics to create a poem is meaningful to both subjects. And so, lost long ago in the pages of now out-of-print Omni magazine, there is this limerick:

A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Is nine squared, and not a bit more.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: man, I miss the classroom.

 



1 Comments:


At 6:03 AM, Blogger Ms Characterized

Whoa! SO COOL.

 


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