CATHRYN RICKETTS:

My name is Cathryn Ricketts, and I'm the Creative Arts Advisor for years 7 to 12 at the learning and teaching Directorate of the department of education.

Embedding numeracy into the creative arts may appear to be a challenge at first. However, with careful investigation of our curriculum content you would discover incredible learning experiences for your students. The most important thing to take away from this video is the reassurance to your students that numeracy is present and important for the successful study in all of our subjects. Today we will look at ways we are already addressing numeracy in four areas consistent from K-10, of dance, drama, music, and visual arts, and conclude with teaching and learning experiences that excite us in each of those areas.

Today we will be looking at teaching and learning activities from K-10 in dance, drama, music, and visual arts. Numerical concepts are exemplified in dance through spatial awareness; elements of movement, dance, and construction; counting beats within varied metres; exploring tempo; rhythmic and choreographical patterns; sequences and structures like expanding, condensing, retrograde, inversions, repetition; routines and movement diagrams; practical aspects like production budgeting; and choreographical mapping with dance artwork analysis.

Here are six activities you can use in a stage 4 or 5 classroom. One: get students to form shapes and numbers. Develop this into dance practical performances that require problem-solving through multiplication, subtraction, and addition. Two: use multiplicative thinking to choreograph and perform large-scale dance performances. Three: analyse the elements of instruction by investigating the probability and statistics of movement and repetition.

Drama and numeracy complement each other so frequently and so cleverly that students are often unaware that they are performing mathematical thinking while completing drama. We explore numeracy when looking at space and shape awareness, direction, the elements of drama, sequencing and structure, size plains, movement pathways, probability, proxemics, budgeting, the elements of production, set design, given circumstances of characters, and dramatic forms.

Some stage 4 and 5 learning activities for drama could be, one: physical warmups and cool-downs requiring movements specifically related to numbered groups and money. Two: explore the different theatre stages, such as proscenium arch, a thrust, and look at how various performances could be performed with the pros and cons for the sets, the acoustics, the space. And block and work scenes within these spaces. Three: create timelines for characters, or passages of time to explore the recording, measuring and passage of duration within a play. Four: estimate data and add and create diagrams, exploring the probability of characters, storylines, and given circumstances. Five: data analysis and management of production budgets, estimates, and proportional reasoning for elements of the production. And six: improvisation games that allow students to experiment with time allocations, estimate, and adjust performances with preparation time and to time restrictions. 2 Numeracy in the creative arts - transcript

Music and numeracy are very closely related. When studying music in stages 4 and 5, we look at speech, chance, and songs; counting beats; rhythm patterns; musical concepts; duration, such as beat, rhythm, metre, tempo, dynamics, structure, symbol; graphic notation; groupings; accents; metres; traditional notation; patterns and sequences; pitch; harmony; tonality; motifs; time; patterns; improvisation; musical history; performance; oral, and ICT.

Six tasks or activities you could use I your stage 4 or 5 music classroom. One: simple equations through graphic music and notation. Two: create graphical representations of the line of pitch. Three: justify and explore the duration and time between different units of notation. Four: explore the difference in measurement between large-scale and small-scale sized instruments and their tone pitch or tone colour. Five: listening, responding, and arranging pieces using addition and subtraction of various instruments. Six: statistical investigations for audience purpose, music, and sound levels in performance.

Last but not least, numerical concept are exemplified in the visual arts when looking at: artistic forms, modelling, illustrating; symbols, textures, lines, graphs, patterns and numbers; artistic techniques to investigate and create, such as shapes, perspectives, volume, mass, dimension, solids, voids, 2D, 3D, fractions, decimals, patterns, percentages, symbol, money, ratios, angles, proportional reasoning, Pythagoras's theorem, areas of a shape, colour, estimate, and materials.

Six tasks or activities you could use in your visual arts classroom could be, one: predict higher terms of patterns by increasing picture sizes by 2, 4, 20, etc. Two: estimate on how much colour is required for what combination, then solve through applying the mathematical technique. Three: justify proportional reasoning problems when solving problems for questions, for topics like the amount of paint required for particular rooms. Four: explore historical artworks and art preservation by investigating environmental considerations, such as temperature and the impact this has on materials, the colour, and the canvases. Five: study and create perspectives and angles through contemporary and historical artworks. Six: solve real world issues by running a week of lessons where students are responsible for ordering and managing their own art materials.

By delivering powerful lessons that successfully combine numeracy and the creative arts, a world of exciting classroom opportunities come to life. It is so important that we, as creative arts teachers, take the initiative to think outside of the box and embed numeracy activities as frequently as possible through fun and engaging lessons.

END OF TRANSCRIPT