Summer SAVY Session 5, Day 1, Math and Music
Day 1: Welcome to our week-long SAVY adventure! We kicked off an exciting journey today in Math and Music, where we will be exploring the fascinating world of mathematics and its interaction with music.
To start, students shared their names, school, hobbies, and most importantly, a song that they felt described their personality. These songs ranged from George Strait to Beethoven to Taylor Swift. After a few songs and introductions, it was obvious that the students were already getting comfortable with one another and getting even more excited for the week. We then brainstormed rules for the classroom and ways to demonstrate respect for each other. The students came up with the following rules all on their own and have been following them all day:
- Be kind
- Be respectful
- Be involved
- Be safe
After we got to know one another, it was time to explore probability. We experimented by rolling large dice then finding the sum, and discovered certain values like a 2 or 12 were much less likely to be rolled than a 6 or 7. Next, we dove deeper into probability using a playlist containing each student’s favorite song! We discussed the probability of our favorite song being played next, our song OR our neighbors’ favorite song being played next, and BOTH of our songs being played right after one another. Through this exercise, students gained a deeper understanding of how compound events can result in very low probabilities. We even ventured into thinking about the probability that a specific genre or a specific artist’s song would be played next (there was quite a bit of Taylor Swift’s music among our favorites). To conclude, we dove deep into academic vocabulary, and learned to speak about these situations with the language of intersections, unions, and permutations/combinations in mathematics!
Day 1 in Math and Music at SAVY set the stage for an exciting week of exploration, collaboration, and discovery. Your students are incredibly bright, curious, and creative, and we look forward to witnessing students’ growth as they develop their mathematical skills, forge new friendships, and uncover the magic of math within music. Tomorrow, we will discuss the fine line between inspiration and copyright, and we will also get to experience a LIVE French horn performance and delve more into the intricacies of math and music within time signatures and fractions!
Thank you!!
Zoe & Jeremiah