Through the disciplines and experiences of architecture, music, mathematics, and language arts are integrated wherever possible. (See math standards in Appendix. Kindergarten math standards that are addressed have an asterisk (*) before the standard.) The unit will be taught in second quarter of the year, after students have acclimated themselves with school and classroom procedures and routines. As they will be building upon home and other life experiences, we will explore mathematics through the lens of architecture and music. The unit will last approximately 3 weeks.
The introduction to the unit open with Lesson #1, called a "gallery walk." In this activity, many photographs acquired during the Yale seminars pertaining to the topic (architectural images, musical images) and a variety of objects and materials (instruments, architectural materials) will be posted at different stations throughout the room. Students will rotate around the room in small groups, study the photographs/objects, and write their observations and questions on a paper next to the photograph that has a specific prompt, such as "I observe," "I wonder," or "I predict." These objects and cards will be posted in the room for the duration of the unit, and the teacher will guide a discussion about the images as guided by the student observations and questions. Lesson #2 will again activate students' schema (prior knowledge) as well as give the teacher a sense of how students feel about their baseline knowledge of topics within the unit. Students will also place a sticker along three line continuums labeled "Architecture," "Music," and "Math." On the left side of the line continuum, it will be labeled with a question mark: "I don't know anything about this." On the right side, it will be labeled with a smiley face: "I'm an expert at this." Students will place their sticker dots along the continuum to mark where they perceive their understanding is of that subject. Students will also be offered the optional activity of writing a vocabulary word or drawing a picture related to the subject on the sticker dot. At the end of the unit, students can go back and do both activities again, this time writing what they have learned about each object/picture, as well as placing different colored dots to show their growth and learning for each of the three subject matters.
Lesson #3 involves a "KWL (what we Know, what we Want to know, and what we've Learned) inquiry chart." In this activity, which is detailed below, students' schema/prior knowledge, which has already been activated during the gallery walk and line continuums, is recorded on a chart with student initials by each statement. Student questions are also generated which can be added to throughout the unit and researched by the students to create greater enthusiasm for learning. The L column of the KWL will be revisited at the end of the unit to answer the questions from the initial activity as well as share other facts and concepts that were learned.
Students will do another gallery walk after observing an example using all five senses with a material or instrument. Answers will be written out to the following prompts:
What do I see (picture of an eye)?
What do I smell (picture of a nose)?
What do I taste (picture of a mouth and tongue)?
What do I feel/touch (picture of a finger)?
What do I hear (picture of an ear) (material or instrument to be struck or played)?
Gradual release of responsibility, in which the teacher models an activity, then students and teacher practice it together, and students eventually engage in independent practice (I-We-You), will be a format for instruction throughout the unit. At this point in time, students will go around the room with the teacher and fill out answers to those same five prompts for different architectural materials and musical instruments. After completing all five senses for all the materials, teacher and students will then be architecture and music detectives, where the teacher will read off cards saying something like: I look brown and black, with four strings. I smell like wood. I taste like wood. I feel smooth and have curves and thin strings. I sound like singing. I am… (Students guess) a violin! Then students point to which instrument is a violin. We continue the five senses architecture and music detectives game until all the items in the room have been played/utilized.
Students will also, at this point, become exposed to some chants and poems which will reinforce the target vocabulary (lesson 5). In these poems, the parts of speech will be color-coded. The poems follow a specific frame, and are highly contextualized with pictures and photographs to support struggling readers.
The next lesson will be a time line of architecture and musical history, noting shapes and lines as images are shown from each time period. After this lesson, we will read the book Architecture Shapes and take a field trip to Yale to see some of the images previously viewed in the introductory lessons, as well as have students go on a "shape hunt." Each pair of students will be assigned to a specific shape on the top of separate sheets. As students find examples in the buildings, of certain shapes, students will tally the number of shapes they have found as they will be given individual sheets to mark on. At this point, there will be a transition into specific math skill practice sheets with architectural and musical themes--counting the numbers of sides, ordering numbers, finding shapes, etc. in music and architecture images.
Other lessons that can be included are noting sound differences with materials that are struck in different rooms, making instruments with different architectural materials, and going through the process of designing and creating a raised garden bed in the spring to plant flowers and vegetables. Collaboration with other teachers within the school, and Martin Gehner, Yale Architecture professor emeritus at Yale can allow the unit to expand and evolve to suit the particular teacher or school's needs and interests.