Teaching Math with Poetry -- Some Activities

      The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) offers delightful and broad-ranging connections between mathematics and the arts.  An article that I discovered recently considers ways to use poetry in mathematics classes.  Found in the July 2023 issue, "Teaching Mathematics with Poetry: Some Activities,"  by Alexis E. Langellier (an adjunct professor of Computer Science at Moraine Valley Community College and a graduate teaching assistant at graduate student in Mathematical Sciences at Northern Illinois University).  Working toward a degree in Computer Science, Langellier has this intent:  My goal is to get more women in STEM.

    Langellier introduces her article with these words:

During the summer of 2021, I experimented with a new way of getting children excited about mathematics: math poetry. ”Math” can be a trigger word for some children and many adults. I wanted to find a way to make learning math fun — without the students knowing they’re doing math. In this paper I describe some activities I used with students ranging from grades K-12 to the college level and share several poem examples, from students in grades two through eight.

Here is a sample of Langellier's "word arithmetic" -- which she uses as an introduction to word problems:

Langellier's complete article is available here.