Using POETRY as an aid in learning MATHEMATICS

     "Math problems take on new meaning in this class that combines rhymes and verse with math instruction."

     The above quotation comes from the website The Conversation, from a series entitled Uncommon Courses -- a series that highlights unconventional approaches to teaching.  In an article entitled "Rhyme and reason -- why a university professor uses poetry to teach math," Ricardo Martinez -- who teaches mathematics education at Penn State University --  tells how math problems take on new meaning in a class that combines rhymes and verse with math instruction. 

 As he tells about the course, Martinez explains:

I have always enjoyed writing poetry. As a high school mathematics teacher, I recall telling my students that everything is and can be connected to math, even creative writing. Then, as a graduate student, I read about people using “I am” poem templates for young people to express who they are through a series of “I am” statements, and I thought to myself, where is the “I am” math poem template? So I created one. 

Here is a link to the "I am" template that Martinez offers students to help them gather information for a poem. Following that, he worked with students on problem-posing poetry -- poems related to a social issue and usable as alternative to traditional word problems.  Poetry became a way of connecting the real world to math learning.  Below I include the poem “Number Sense,” written by Martinez, a poem he shares to show how a poem can use actual data and become a math problem for students to solve.  At this link, "The Wrong Bathroom, Continuously" -- a poem that applies math learning.

     Number Sense     by Ricardo Martinez

          Men and women.
We define them,
to divide them;
          stuck in a binary we
pay men more.
          We pay women less.
Imagine any job
He is paid, $915
Subtract $166
          And each week that is what she is left with.
Numbers taken from
the 2016 US Labor of Statistics
a focus on medians
impacting all of us --
Monthly his works worth is $3,660
Those same four weeks
her yield is $2996
a thirty year
          career
is living with this difference
three hundred sixty more times
          it happens every day
so
is it okay -- that we are okay --
with this number sense.

Ideas from Ricardo Martinez have also been included in this posting from 2023.
And here's another mathy poem to explore, "The Wrong Bathroom, Continuously" by Yusuf Kara.