Visual Journal Entry 4

In class, we participated in an assignment called “Human Library.” For this project, each student brought in a particular knowledge/skill that was unique to them, and that could be used in some sort of way in a high school classroom, tying in that skill to the BC curriculum.

Attached to this post is an image of one student’s Human Library project, which consisted of representing the lengths of the digestive organs in the form of crotchet.

The knowledge/skill that I brought to the table was the relation between music and math. In particular, I offered information on how note lengths in music are related to fractions in music. So, for example, just how the number 1 can be divided into two halves, a note in music can be (and is often) divided into halves, or thirds, quarters, sixths, eights, etc. Fractions appear in all musical pieces. This relation between fractions and music can 1) help students in a Grade 6-9 math class understand the incorporation of fractions into everyday life, and 2) help students in a Grade 6-12 music class tie in mathematics to their current musical knowledge.

I think that this would be a very interesting project to incorporate into schools. It can be multimodal; for example, in my project, I incorporated a hands-on drumming activity, a visual and auditory video of myself drumming, and verbal delivery of information. In addition, it incorporates some elements of multiliteracy, such as experiencing the new and applying creatively. Students in a math class who have not compared fractions to the division of time in music are experiencing new concepts, new frameworks of thinking, and new meanings in mathematics. For students in a music class learning about the existence of fractions in their playing, there is opportunity to apply what they have learned and creatively develop new musical ideas and abilities. In my observations and my own experiences of high school math classrooms, there is little to no relation of math to the real world. Therefore, this strategy of relating math to music (or vice versa) can impact students’ interest on the topic at hand.

If high school students were assigned a Human Library project similar to this one, it could be beneficial in multiple ways, such as introducing them to multimodal and multiliterate approaches to learning, and encouraging them to share their knowledge and skills with classmates. I hope to use this cross-curricular, multimodal, and multiliterate approach to learning in my future classrooms.