Developed by Corrinne Fischer
Northmont High School, Dayton
Geometry
Grade Level: High School Geometery

Click here to view/download this lesson plan as a PDF.

Introduction

Drawing a correlation between math and the arts is often seen as difficult, if not impossible. Not so for math teacher Corrinne Fischer from Northmont High School in Dayton, Ohio. She is not only an accomplished teacher of senior level math, but plays trumpet with care and enthusiasm. Additionally, she understands the ways that technology can be used to engender an understanding of how math and music fit together. Thus, inspired by a presentation by artists from Jazz at Lincoln Center during Muse Machine’s Summer Institute 2018, she created an engaging lesson for her students that ties the rhythms of jazz to the patterns of geometry. The website mathsciencemusic.org led Corrinne to the creative tool, Groove Pizza. It is a circular rhythm app for creative music making and a tool for creating grooves using math concepts like shapes, angles and patterns. Students liked the lesson so much that they asked to continue beyond the time allotted for the lesson. Many teachers only dream of such classroom engagement!

Inspiration

Throughout the Muse Machine Summer Institute 2018, we kept turning back to the basics. Whether it was after an intense historical lesson or before a jam session, the Jazz at Lincoln Center artists would review the four basic jazz rhythms. (Stomp Clapp, Clave, Swing and Shuffle) In Geometry, we often do the same thing by going back to the basics. Geometry is unique because it is extremely visual. When I found the website mathsciencemusic.org and its Groove Pizza, I was hooked. I now had an easy visual to help everyone connect their geometric knowledge with the rhythms of jazz.

Overview

Summary

After practicing the different jazz rhythms discussed at Summer Institute, visualizing them with www.mathsciencemusic.org’s Groove Pizza, and discussing the mathematics within the figures, students will create their own rhythms and the Geometry within them.

Standards

G.CO.2 Represent transformations in the plane using, e.g., transparencies and geometry software; describe transformations as functions that take po_ints in the plane as inputs and give other points as outputs. Compare transformations that preserve distance and angle to those that do not, e.g., translation versus horizontal stretch

G.CO.5 Given a geometric figure and a rotation, reflection, or translation, draw the transformed figure using items such as graph paper, tracing paper, or geometry software. Specify a sequence of transformations that will carry a given figure onto another.

G.CO.10 Prove and apply theorems about triangles. Theorems include but are not restricted to the following: measures of interior angles of a triangle sum to 180°

Objectives/Outcomes

Students will be able to clap the four basic jazz rhythms. Students will be able to identify the geometric shapes and transformations within the different rhythmic patterns.

Teaching Approach

Discovery learning, group work and presentations

Assessment

Classroom monitoring, group presentations.

Lesson Preparation

Teacher Needs

Teacher Information: Google Slides presentation, premade Groove Pizza site, access to technology
Helpful Hints: I spent a lot of time just playing around with Groove Pizza so I would be more familiar with it. I should have made a little tutorial sheet (how to start over, how to play only one “Pizza” instead of four, etc.).

Student Needs

• Device, headphones

Prior Knowledge: Rhythmic knowledge will be helpful, knowledge of the four geometric transformations (translation, reflection, rotation, and dilation) as well as how to name polygons and find the sum of the measures of their interior angles.
Student Voice: Students are able to create their own rhythms and use whichever type of music they prefer from the five options.
Vocabulary: stomp-clap, swing, shuffle, clave, translation, reflection, rotation, and dilation, interior angles, polygon.

Evidence/Assessment of Outcomes

Students will be making presentations and submitting them to Google Classroom. They will be given a rubric as well as the assignment description via Google Classroom.

Enduring Understandings

Mathematical paUerns can be observed throughout music, art, and all areas of life.

Learning Plan

Prompt: PowerPoint presentation.

Hooks: As students enter the room, Take the A Train, will be playing. We will start having a discussion about what they hear and the music will start and stop. I will continue the discussion as if nothing happened.

Essential Question(s): Which is better, seeing or hearing?

Resources: Groove Pizza, Google Slides or other presentation software

Teacher and Student Performance Tasks: As the students were finishing up their quiz, I turned the song Take the A Train on over the speakers. Most students noticed, but continued their work as it played quietly. After a discussion about “what if you couldn’t hear that?” I told the students that we would be visualizing music. I then showed them visualizations from www.mathsciencemusic.org’s Groove Pizza of the four basic jazz rhythms we discussed at Summer Institute, stomp-clap, clave, swing and shuffle and asked for any observations. Most were not mathematical, so I prompted the students to think about the shapes they were seeing and how they compared to one another. After visualizing each rhythm, I asked them to act it out; physically stomp-clapping, listening and repeating the clave rhythm, or playing along with the cabinet routine and wiping your hands of for the shuffle. Once these conversations settled, I showed the students the images again with their names and also played them on Groove Pizza. Modeling the proper geometric shape names as well. Students were then asked to access Groove Pizza and create their own rhythms. They were given specific requirements to include at least one of the four jazz rhythms, state the proper name of each polygon they made, find the sum of the interior angles of their polygons, state any transformations that applied to congruent or similar polygons as well to include a screenshot and link to their Groove Pizza in their final presentation.

Final Review: The students showed me they were able to use Groove Pizza effectively by creating their presentations and’applying the Geometry skills above on the additional slides or in the comments section.

PowerPoint images may be seen in the PDF version of this lesson plan: click here to view/download.

Lesson Reflection

Overall the lesson went well. My students really enjoyed doing something a little different and even asked for more time for the project. I didn’t originally have a rubric and had to answer a few questions, but this lesson was more for fun and less for a grade anyway. Similarly, I didn’t require the students to act out every rhythm, but I should have. I should have waited to post the link to Groove Pizza as some students were messing around with it early. I also included in the helpful hints, that next time I will have a cheat sheet ready for how to use Groove Pizza if students don’t have enough time to explore before the lesson.