How music and movement can help children understand mathematics

Observing rows of numbers or formulas on a page can be disconcerting for many children who study mathematics or science at school. But music, drawing and even body movements offer promising new ways to teach young people complex topics.

The sound of a violin string or drum beat may at first seem to have little to do with physics, fractions or angles. Indeed, science and artistic subjects such as music have always been treated separately in education.

But researchers believe that removing arbitrary barriers between science and art could help students understand complex concepts more easily. It leads to a new teaching method that aims to combine science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, known collectively as STEAM.

"We are trying to make this STEAM learning approach known to the educational community," said Dr. Vassilis Katsouros of the Athena Research and Speech Language and Speech Institute in Athens, Greece. , and coordinator of a project called iMuSciCA. "When you bring together people from the arts and STEM fields, they can work together to have some very creative ideas."

This type of interdisciplinary collaboration is becoming increasingly common at the university and industry levels, often leading to exciting new developments in technology, science and art. Mr Katsouros and his colleagues hope to introduce this way of thinking earlier.

Theory of the waves

The iMuSciCA project uses music to teach high school students challenging concepts such as wave theory in physics and mathematics equations. Students design a virtual musical instrument on a computer, where they can modify their physical properties to understand the impact on their sound.

"If they change the metal of which a rope is composed, the way it vibrates and the waveform of the sound it produces are different," Dr. Katsouros explained. "Students can see how the density of the material affects the sound and see the sound wave that it produces, which can help them understand concepts such as frequency and amplitude."

The team has created an online "workshop" allowing teachers to integrate the technology and tools developed under iMuSciCA into their courses. Through online tools, students can create string or percussion instruments using the iMuSciCA program.

Technology can also allow students to learn other higher-level concepts, such as geometry and symmetry, by showing how changing the shape or orientation of a surface can change the way sound is reflected. It can also provide information on randomness and periodicity.

Students are encouraged to work as a team to compose their own music, even creating physical versions of the instruments they have designed online using 3D printing. During a pilot event, the students formed a group to play together.

"At the moment, it's only wind instruments, because 3D plastic printing is cheaper and easier than in materials like metal," Dr. Katsouros said. .

Until now, iMuSciCA has been tested in 10 schools in Greece, France and Belgium, involving more than 300 students aged 15 to 16 years. Sixty teachers also participated in workshops to learn how to integrate musical tools into their classes.

Motivation

"We are still measuring and analyzing its impact," said Dr. Katsouros. "But we've seen student motivation increase dramatically, and students of this age are very familiar and interested in music, so it seems to be in touch with them."

But music does not only provide new ways to teach science and mathematics to teens. Researchers have combined it with body movements, applauding and touching physical objects to develop new ways to teach younger children.

"Visual information is not always the best way to communicate things like geometry or arithmetic," said Dr. Monica Gori, neuroscientist at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia de Genoa, Italy, and coordinator of the WeDraw project.

His team has created a series of games with technologies that encourage children under eight to create angles with their bodies or play with sound.

A game called RobotAngle uses motion-sensing cameras to detect when students swap their arms over their heads to create angles. Each angle is associated with different musical notes similar to those of a violin, with a higher pitch used for acute angles and a lower pitch for obtuse angles.

The same system allows children to create fractions by opening their arms to change the numerator and legs by changing the denominator. Applause was also used to trigger a drum beat in rhythm with a moving point on the screen, helping to teach children fractions through rhythm.

Another game, called Cartesian Garden, allows children to draw shapes in a virtual environment by physically walking through a room to collect objects. A third, Spaceshape, teaches children three-dimensional shapes by encouraging them to draw and move them on a touch screen.

Tests

The first tests of the WeDraw team in primary schools in Italy, Ireland and the United Kingdom have allowed more than 200 children to try games in 10 different classes. In each of them, half of one class used multisensory games for 15 minutes each day for one week as part of their lessons and the other half was taught at the same time. help of a simplified version of the game using traditional visual techniques.

"We are seeing improvement in most children," said Dr. Gori. "For the Spaceshape game, for example, we found an understanding of form and movement in 3D."

But some of the improvements seem to be apparent only in certain age groups. For example, the team found that an improved understanding of fractions and shapes in seven-year-olds.

"It's the age at which they should begin to understand these concepts and are therefore more sensitive to the potential benefits," Dr. Gori said.

The team has also developed multisensory techniques that can be used by students with dyslexia or visual impairment. The use of body movements associated with sound can really help blind children to understand angles, for example.

Dr. Gori added that they hoped in the future to further combine the movements of music and body to use dance as a teaching tool.

"Until now, we used arm movements, applause and sounds, but it would be nice to use dance in the future," she said.