Mirror Dancing

For a number of years we have run this annual mirror dance activity at the International School of Toulouse, but this year we decided to make a bit more of an event of it! I first got the idea from a Workshop run by Anne Watson at the UK based ATM conference a few years ago!

The idea is simple! In groups of two or more, students must make a dance routine lasting between 60 and 90 seconds. The routine must be based on symmetry. in the first instance, reflective symmetry where students are each others reflection either side of an imaginary mirror line. Afterwards, students can consider using two (or more) mirror lines, before going on to consider translation, rotation and enlargement! Students were judged and given a score out of 10 in three different categories!

1. Aesthetic appeal
2. Technical difficulty
3. Symmetrical accuracy

The total scores were then divided by the year group the team came from as a bit of a leveller!

More important than that was amazing creativity shown by all of the students involved. It is wonderful to see how students will play with these mathematical ideas when the right circumstances are created and we are really impressed with and proud of the work our students did on this. We are also particularly pleased with the willingness they have shown to both take part and then perform in front of each other! Well done to all students who took part!

Students have chosen their own prize and that is that they are able to throw wet sponges at the maths teachers!

See also 'Maths and Feet' from Simon Gregg based activities from http://www.mathinyourfeet.com/ from Malke Rosenfeld 

Here are some photos for now and there will be some videos to follow......

And now following the comment below, evidence of the prize giving!!!

Maths and Feet

Year 5G have been devising and performing four-beat dance patterns with a variety of movements to explore shape and space.

We began by creating squares in the hall with masking tape, naming the directions on the squares and establishing a common language about them.

Next we started the four-beat patterns with simple "copying" of each other's feet positions and moves, where the same shape and movement is simply translated from one square to the next:



We devised our own notations for recording these on paper.

In the second session we revisited our first moves, then we looked at mirror reflection and tried to incorporate this into our four-step patterns.



The idea and inspiration for this activity came from Malke Rosenfield's brilliant "Math in Your Feet" program, though it should be said that ours is a very rough approximation of what is a much more developed and professional program. That said, there were a number of things that were really impressive about what the class did:

• Their total concentration;
• Their amazing and precise cooperation in pairs;
• Their energy;
• Their ability to devise notation to record positions and moves;
• Their use of mathematical vocabulary to describe their patterns.

In this connection, it's worth watching the video and reading "What Success Looks Like" on this page on the Math in Your Feet site.

We used Malke Rosenfield's Movement Variables chart (which she includes in a really useful article here) to help consider some of the elements that should go into our patterns, and also to help record these patterns:

Altogether, it was a fantastic approach to maths learning, which we will hopefully refine and extend in the future.