Seekers — Mathematics; Timelines

Mathematician MeetUp—timelines, measures of music, hunting and gathering and sharing the spoils

• Timelines—we were looking at timelines this morning, let's take another quick look at timelines before we do some hunting and gathering with our table tribes. 
  • Hand out/hold up timelines. Signal—Where is the beginning of the timeline? The end? How do you know? Turn and teach. 
  • How do we start a timeline? What goes at this very first mark? Always? Any other answers? What are we looking, where are we beginning? Cosmic calendar to mythological timeline to the Civil War to seconds in a minute—where do we start with each of those? End? Sketch and discuss. What did you guys find?
  • Draw a timeline of your own choosing, from any of the listed above to the schedule of your day, to the arc of a story. Then compare two points on the timeline/storyline and articulate the sum or difference numerically—as in, this many years between a and b or this many days total, etc. It can be anything you want, I just want to warm up our arimethic muscles wake us up to timelines all around us. After 5 minutes of quiet time, we will share our findings in group discussions, so listen for the 60 second bell. 
  • • In the Magical Bird story we read during Anthropology, the kids focused on their own music, marched to their own beat. What might your beat look, sound and feel like? Behind your timelines in your Math Notebooks, you should have a measure of music. We will explore and experiment and collaborate on this throughout the rest of the unit and ultimately include it in our unit portfolio, so today is just the beginning, the exploration and play. I have plenty of these to experiment with during centers etc., so explore and experiment freely. Music is usually written in measures of 3 or 4, as in 1, 2, 3 or 1, 2, 3, 4. Within those thirds or quarters, you can further divide to 8ths or 16ths etc. To mark these loosely on your bars of music, you can fold it into 3 or 4 equal parts. Discuss with your table mates if you have questions or troubles. Mark with a pencil ideas, beats and rhythms you might like to explore for your song. We will have 5 minutes to explore quietly before we share with our tibes and return these to our folders
    •