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CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS – NARRATIVE REPORT OF TEACHERS’

EXPERIENCES WITH BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL MATH

As a first step in reporting the findings of this dissertation study, this chapter is

comprised of three narrative descriptions of each teacher’s experiences designing and

implementing BBM lessons. By providing a complete report of both exemplary and non-

exemplary BBM lessons, these narratives begin to address research sub-question 1, What

do exemplary BBM lessons look like?, while also reporting data and observations “in

context” that will be referred to in Chapter Five to answer the three research sub-

questions.

Each narrative is organized chronologically in order to walk the reader through

each teacher’s lesson planning, lesson implementation, and reflections on their

experiences. Although the PAQT observation scores provide measurable data,

participants’ written lesson plans, videos, interviews, and a student survey supplement

these quantitative scores with additional information, including quotes from participants,

student work, and student surveys, which allow for a more nuanced understanding.

To help maintain confidentiality, I assigned pseudonyms to both the schools and

the teachers. This protects confidentiality, yet enables readers to follow quotes from

specific teachers over time, to understand their different teaching styles and methods, and

to have a sense of their personalities as well as their individual contributions to this study.
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GEORGE

Background

I had posed the idea of Beautiful, Beautiful Math to George in late winter of 2014,

more than a year before my official study began. He immediately expressed enthusiasm

for the project and for being a part of the study. In the interim, he and I kept in contact,

and George experimented with several lessons that included using works of art to teach

mathematics. For example, in one of these pre-research study lessons, students used

George Seurat’s 1884 pointillist painting, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grand Jatte,

to estimate the number of “dots” of paint Seurat used to create this masterpiece.

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by George Seurat, 1884-1886 Close Up of Paint “Dots”

Figure 4.1: Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884 - 1886

Classroom Context

George was able to be very flexible with his lessons because of the proximity and

school membership to the MAG, which allowed him to take students there without a

formal appointment. Additionally, the Brick School was unusual in that students did not

take standardized tests, nor did the school adhere to any formalized curriculum beyond the

scope and sequence of the Singapore Math series. George had the freedom to be

extremely flexible in how he structured lessons and how much time he spent on each

topic.
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Because George taught all students in grades 1 through 6, I had an opportunity to

witness lessons with different grade levels. This provided me with a wide variety of

student ages in which to observe BBM lessons, which proved invaluable for determining

how readily both the primary and intermediate grades were able to use the artworks for

the mathematical problems. I was also able to observe how well they were able to use

higher-order thinking. It did not, however, allow me to observe a continuum of three

lessons across one particular grade level, which was different from my experiences with

Karl and Yvette.

George was the only one of the three teachers in this study with enough

background in art and art history to independently find images from the classical

repertoire of European art and to use them in his lessons. For example, prior to taking his

students to the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) for their first BBM lesson, George

introduced marble and bronze sculptures to his students with slides comparing

Michelangelo’s and Donatello’s David. By examining these photographs, his students

were better able to understand the sculptural work they studied at the MAG, which

included both marble and bronze.

Figure 4.2: Michelangel’s David, 1501 – 1504, and Donatello’s David, 1430 - 1440
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Highlights of the Baseline Lesson

George’s classroom and his teaching style were fairly traditional. Although placed

in groupings of twos and threes, students’ desks all faced forward, which inhibited them

from having strong face-to-face conversations. During George’s baseline lesson, his

voice was the one heard the most. The baseline lesson, with a class of three fourth

graders, focused on lines of symmetry. George used the example of making a tortilla

sandwich for his daughter as the context within which to show that cutting a round shape

into congruent segments could be accomplished using lines of symmetry. The students

were very attentive and enjoyed the context, at times asking him questions about his

family.

About two-thirds of the way through the lesson, George shifted gears and asked

his students to find lines of symmetry in letters and numbers, stating that some would and

some would not have such lines. Students provided examples, and George wrote them on

the smartboard along with the line of symmetry suggested by each student. In the final

ten minutes, George challenged the students to cut a shape from a folded sheet of paper to

create a symmetrical form. He then modeled his own example of a folded cat’s face.

Students raced to complete their pictures by the end of class.

George’s PAQT scores reflected the strong relationship he had forged with his

students; his student engagement score for the baseline lesson was a perfect 40. The

cognitive demand, however, was quite low, only 16 out of a possible 40, and the use of

academic language in the class was 24. Overall, his PAQT score was 80, higher than the

average of 65 observed in elementary classrooms (personal communication with

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Gallagher); however, the student engagement score clearly pulled George’s overall score

up. Table 4.1 on the following page summarizes George’s lessons from this study.

TABLE 4.1: PAQT SCORES from Observations of George

Baseline Lesson vs. Beautiful, Beautiful Math Lessons
NOTE: The highest possible score is 40 within each measure, 120 total.
The gray background indicates an increase of at least 10 points over the baseline.

PAQT GEORGE
Score Baseline
Lesson

Engagement 40

Cognitive
Demand 16

Academic Language
24

OVERALL LESSON
80

BBM Lesson #1

Planning

George’s BBM lessons emerged in a different format, each requiring three to four

class periods to complete. George preferred to find artwork that could be used to

represent a variety of math topics; this way, he could use the same work for several

different grade levels. Given the wide range of grades he taught at Brick School, this

helped him limit the background preparation needed for each lesson. Additionally,

George felt that it was important for students from different grades to be able to discuss

the same work of art. As our work together progressed, he stated that he often overheard

cross-grade conversations about Beautiful, Beautiful Math during lunch and recess and

that the commonality of this work made the school feel more cohesive.
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Rather than focus on a specific topic or standard when initially planning,

George preferred to examine works of art and then, once he had decided on one or more

of them, he would determine the mathematics that could be derived from them. I did,

however, ask Greg which topics his students typically struggled with the most; he

immediately replied that fractions were very difficult, especially for his youngest students,

and that ratios and proportions were challenging for his older students. For the first

lesson, he decided to focus on The Creation Myth by Tom Otterness, a multi-statue work

of art in bronze and limestone that stands on the corner of University Avenue and

Goodman Street in Rochester, taking up about a half acre of land. It consists of

approximately thirty pieces and represents a small female artist, in bronze, who is

sculpting enormous limestone sculptures, which are in various stages of completion.

Figure 4.3: Images from Tom Otterness’ The Creation Myth, 2012

Because George and I had discussed the importance of a firm foundation in ratios

and proportions for middle school and high school success in mathematics, I decided to

focus primarily on the 5th and 6th grades during this lesson. George and I discussed how

to engage students with these statues, and we decided to ask them a compelling question:

“Why haven’t they been stolen?” Answering this question would require his 5th – 6th
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grade students to find their approximate weights, which meant carefully measuring them,

modeling the various parts with 3-dimensional geometric shapes, and then using density

tables to estimate the actual weight of the different sculptures.

George also wanted his students to learn more about the art of sculpture itself, so

he designed a pre-lesson on the two basic techniques used in The Creation Myth: A

“taking away” sculpture in which stone or wood is removed to create the image, and a

“building up” type in which a sculpture is created in metal, often through a “lost wax”

molding process. This was the lesson in which he shared the Michelangelo and Donatello

sculptures of David with his students, a lesson I mentioned earlier. George felt that with

this background information, his students were ready to begin their math work by visiting

and measuring the actual sculptures.

George then introduced the sculptures they would be studying the following day.

The question he posed to his students was, “These are very valuable works. Why doesn’t

someone just pick up the small bronzes and walk or drive away with them?” Students

came up with many suggestions and determined that they needed to measure the

sculptures to figure out just how difficult it would be to carry one away.

The learning targets for George’s first BBM lesson were articulated as:

 I can use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real world problems.

 I can model sculptures using 3-dimensional shapes.

 I can determine the approximate volume of a sculpture.

 I can use density tables to calculate the weight of a sculpture.

The complete BBM lessons with PAQT scores can be found in Appendix D.
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Overview of Lesson #1a Implementation

The day after their introductory lesson on sculpture, the entire school of 43

students and eight teachers walked over to the Memorial Art Gallery to closely examine

and measure the Creation Myth. The fifth and sixth graders knew they needed to gather

enough information to eventually calculate the volume of the different sculptures; they,

therefore, approximated the head of the artist as a sphere, her torso and skirt as a cone,

and her arms, legs and neck as cylinders. The younger students found several different

methods of estimating the heights of the standing limestone sculptures. Students worked

in pairs or triads and spent the entire visit actively engaged in capturing their sketches,

measurements, thinking, and estimations in their notecatchers. See Appendix D for a

detailed account of how the lesson developed, along with PAQT scores assigned to each

5-minute segment.

Below are two examples of student work from from the 5th and 6th grade class.

These students were able to estimate the volume of different sections of the statues;

however, they expressed concern about how to calculate the actual weight, which thus

became the topic for the next part of the lesson.

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Figure 4.4: Examples of Student Work

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Post-Lesson #1a Interview/Planning for Lesson #1b

During our post-lesson interview and planning session, George spoke about the

inconsistencies with the measurements his students had taken. He did, however, find

that students had done a good job measuring a giant head, approximated by a sphere and

a cylinder, and decided that would be a good place for his students to calculate the

volume and then use the density of limestone to get an approximation of the sculpture’s

weight. Those students who were able to calculate the weight of this sculpture with ease

would be encouraged to use their measurements of the small bronze statue and

determine an approximation of its weight. This was a more complex figure, which the

students had to model geometrically using a sphere, several cylinders, and a cone.

Instead of heavily scaffolding the lesson on calculating weight from volume and

density, George decided to simply put the density measures for limestone and bronze in

front of his students to see how far they could get. Instead of modeling the actual process

of calculating weight, George decided to spend the first part of the lesson helping students

understand the concept of density.

Overview of Lesson #1b Implementation

During the final part of George’s first BBM lesson, the fifth and sixth graders

completed their calculations and used the densities of bronze and limestone to estimate

the weights of the sculptures. George spent the first fifteen minutes using a tissue box,

cubic inch models made from wood, and various objects made of limestone and bronze to

help his students begin to make sense of this concept.

Students were able to complete their volume calculations for each part of their

sculptures, using formulas they had previously learned for the volume of cubes, prisms,
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cones, cylinders and spheres. Once they had an estimate of the total volume of their

sculptures, they used the density measures for limestone and bronze and multiplied the

density of the sculpture’s material by its volume. This led to some very interesting

situations when students found densities in pounds per cubic foot while they had

measured the sculptures in inches and calculated the volume in cubic inches. After

discovering that their first calculations did not make sense, they collaborated to determine

the best ways to work around this dilemma and were ultimately successful in determining

good estimates of the sculptures’ weights. Although George provided some assistance

when this happened, the students themselves collaboratively analyzed their struggles, and

they chose whether to convert the volume or to rework the problems with densities based

on the volume’s measures.

Knowing the weights of each sculpture allowed students to determine that while

the small bronzes would definitely have to be tethered beneath the ground, it would still

be very difficult to just pick up and walk away with a sculpture weighing approximately

50 pounds. The limestone sculptures were much larger, however, with each weighing

over a thousand pounds. A couple of the students determined that if the sculptures were

the same size, the bronze ones would weigh more than three times the weight of the

limestone sculptures. One student also stated that if the bronze were exactly one-third the

size of the large limestone sculpture, then the two sculptures would weigh the same.
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TABLE 4.2: PAQT SCORES from Observations of George

Baseline Lesson vs. Beautiful, Beautiful Math Lessons
NOTE: The highest possible score is 40 within each measure, 120 total.
The gray background indicates an increase of at least 10 points over the baseline.

PAQT GEORGE
Score Baseline BBM Lesson #1a BBM
Lesson at the MAG: Lesson #1b:
Creation Myth, Creation Myth
Volume & follow-up
Density, gr. 5 &
6

Engagement 40 40 40

Cognitive
Demand 16 32 26

Academic Language
24 38 34

OVERALL LESSON
80 110 100

Post-Lesson #1b Interview Highlights

In our post-lesson interview, George discussed his surprise at how accurate most

of the calculations were, with little or no prompting from him. He felt that the students

had set high standards for themselves because they were deeply interested in the outcome.

He was especially surprised that most of his students were able to use the density

measures and ratios with only a small amount of struggling when they discovered that the

units were different. Since the students had been able to talk freely among themselves

during most of the lesson, new information and methods had quickly spread throughout

the class.

George’s PAQT scores increased tremendously in this lesson, as seen in Table **

above. In the first part of the lesson, held at the MAG, the cognitive demand of the task

doubled from 16 to 32 out of a possible 40. The academic language score rose from 24 to
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38 out of a possible 40, illustrating that his students were discussing mathematics with

each other, not simply back and forth with their teacher as was the case in the baseline

lesson. These scores fell a bit during the second part of the lesson, held back in the

classroom. The cognitive demand of the task went down to 26, primarily because the task

had become more rote at times. Academic language remained quite strong, however, at

34. Clearly George’s students were engaged in much more higher-order thinking in this

two-part lesson than they had been in the baseline lesson.

Beautiful, Beautiful Math Lesson #2

Planning

George decided to design a similarly engaging lesson for his first and second

graders on fractions. In the past, he had focused all his work on fractions for these grades

on foods, i.e. sharing pizza and cake. George’s goal was to have these students learn the

basics of fractions at a much deeper and more meaningful level than they had before, this

time moving beyond foods and having students find fractions in works of art. We decided

that George would use overhead transparencies and draw permanent black lines on them

to create different fractions. His students would then look through these transparencies to

see if a particular painting could naturally be split into halves, thirds, or fourths. Below

are examples of the transparencies George gave to each set of partners:

Figure 4.5: Examples of “Fraction Lens” Transparencies

HALVES
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THIRDS

FOURTHS

Because George had been intrigued by his own visit to the traveling exhibit called

“The Human Touch,” he decided that would be the best place for his students to work.

Many of the works in this exhibit could, indeed, very naturally be split into equal parts.

Students would look through their transparencies, which George dubbed “fraction lenses,”

and describe whether a particular work of art could easily be split into that specific

fraction. George introduced the idea of “fraction lenses” the day prior to their visit by

reminding his students of how they used telescopes and microscopes with lenses to be

able to observe things more clearly. The student practiced a little bit with images that he

projected on his smartboard, and they became very excited about their trip to the MAG

the next day. George wanted this lesson to be highly engaging in a way that would keep

his students working independently on fractions, not waiting for his leading questions. He

carefully crafted the experience through the use of the highly engaging “fractions lenses,”

and he built up their anticipation through his classroom lesson the day before their exhibit
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visit. The student practiced a little bit with images that he projected on his smartboard,

and they became very excited about their trip to the MAG the next day. Thus, when the

students arrived in the museum, they were already highly motivated and ready to work on

their own.

The learning target for his second Beautiful, Beautiful Math lesson was:

 I can describe works of art from the Human Touch Exhibition artistically and
mathematically using fractions.

Overview of Lesson #2a Implementation

George’s second BBM lesson focused on teaching the very basic elements of

fractions, especially terminology and the meaning of the denominator, to first and second

graders. The “fraction lenses” included halves, thirds, and fourths. As described earlier,

the fractions lesson with first and second graders took place in the Memorial Art Gallery,

specifically in the travelling exhibit called “The Human Touch.” Interestingly, while I

was waiting for George to arrive with his class, I explained what these first and second

grade students would be doing to the young woman managing the admittance desk. Her

response surprised me, since she explained that this was not an exhibit for young children,

and that “maybe an older group of high school students could understand it, but it will be

way above the heads of younger children.” I could understand her concerns, at least to

some degree. The art pieces in this exhibit included many which had historical

antecedents, for example one of a Japanese woman in a robe and bikini was clearly a

“modern riff” on a Hiroshige woodblock print from the 1830’s (see image below), which

few people would realize unless they had studied art history. Other artworks included

historical references to the Vietnam War and to images of women and their place in
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society from advertisements of the 1950’s. I was unable to use many of the images from

this exhibit, however, because the owners of the works were unwilling to allow them to be

photographed. Wherever possible, however, I have included similar images that are

freely available on the internet.

Figure 4.6: Hiroshige, Geisha, ca.1830, Iona Brown Untitled (female), 2003

When they arrived, George gave his first and second grade students a brief set of

directions, to partner up and use their set of “fraction lenses” to see which ones “fit”

which works of art. As they did this, they were to describe the fractional parts to each

other. The students followed their teacher from one room to the next in The Human

Touch exhibit, excitedly using their “fraction lenses” to discuss the various works of art.

The “student work” for this lesson was oral; therefore, I’ve listed below a few of the audio

clips:

Student to another student: “I think it’s in halves. Look through here.”

Teacher to a student: “What do you see in thirds?” (He is asking the student to
supply evidence for his choice of thirds.)
Student: “The body is in the middle, and there’s equal amounts on the sides.”

Student 1: “This is thirds. Wait, OK this is fourths – each fourth has a different
part – or maybe it could be a third.”
Student 2: “There are three people, so it should be in thirds.”
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I prompt them to see the other “people” – a person in a picture and a doll.
Student 2: “It’s maybe fifths since there is a person in a picture and also a doll.
But they don’t take up the same space.”

Students do this work out loud, and they also begin to push themselves beyond the
lenses given (just halves, thirds and fourths) to fifths, sixths and even thirtieths.
(Audio recording of Lesson Implementation at the MAG, 5-27-15)

Students were especially drawn to a work consisting of 30 squares, each square

depicting 1950’s-style advertising. The students showed me that they could recreate these

thirty squares by cutting a rectangle first into sixths horizontally and then into fifths

vertically. On their way out The Human Touch exhibit, they easily described a work of

sculpture from the museum’s permanent collection, pointing to lines of symmetry and the

appropriate fractional parts those lines created.

Figure 4.7: Monir Farmanfarmaian,

Convertible Series, Group 10, 2011
Mirror and reverse-painted glass on plaster and wood

Post-Lesson #1a Interview

When I described the museum employee’s statement to George, he responded with

a very strong statement: “That’s ridiculous! As if there’s only one way to look at art!

They will see more as they get older, but they got so much from this exhibit.” His
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response, even different from mine, illustrates an important consideration when

determining which works of art students will be able to understand and enjoy. Like great

mathematics problems, truly great art often has multiple access points and can be

enjoyed in different ways as we grow in age and knowledge. George decided he wanted

to use the second half of this lesson to synthesize the fraction concepts and terminology

learned during his students’ visit to the MAG. I suggested that he might want to consider

using the “rule of thirds,” since I knew another teacher who had found that rule very

helpful in teaching fractions to his third graders.

Overview of Lesson #2b Implementation

The third and final part of this lesson was held back in the classroom. George

asked students to remember their favorite work of art, to describe it to a partner, and then

to share it with the whole class. He then provided a brief lesson on the “rule of thirds,”

which describes how many works of art are naturally split up into thirds, sometimes both

vertically and horizontally, and that our eyes tend to travel around the work in that way.

By layering the following grid over this photograph, students were able to see both the

“rule of thirds” and how one-third of one-third is one-ninth.

Figure 4.8: Illustrating the “Rule of Thirds” with Roland Fischer’s L.A. Portrait, 1994 – 2000
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In this second BBM lesson, George’s PAQT scores remained extremely strong. In

the first part of the lesson, his cognitive demand score was his highest of all five of my

observations, a 34 out of 40; it slipped a bit to 31 during the second part. Academic

language was again strong with a 33 and 31 for the two parts. Again, his students were

engaged in much more higher-order thinking during this two-part lesson than they had

been during his baseline.

TABLE 4.3: PAQT SCORES from Observations of George

Baseline Lesson vs. Beautiful, Beautiful Math Lessons
NOTE: The highest possible score is 40 within each measure, 120 total.
The gray background indicates an increase of at least 10 points over the baseline.

GEORGE
PAQT Baseline BBM Lesson #1a BBM BBM Lesson #2 BBM
Score Lesson at the MAG: Lesson #1b: at the MAG: Lesson #2:
Creation Myth, Creation Myth Human Touch Human Touch
Volume & follow-up Exhibit, Exhibit,
Density, gr. 5 & Fractions, gr. 1 & Fractions, follow-
6 2 up

Engagement 40 40 40 40 40

Cognitive
Demand 16 32 26 34 29

Academic Language
24 38 34 33 31

OVERALL LESSON
80 110 100 107 100

Average Increase in: Cognitive Demand scores = 14.25; Academic Language = 9.75
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The graph below summarizes George’s overall PAQT scores for my five

observations:

GEORGE
120 110 107
100 100
S 100 80
P 80
C
A
O 60
Q
R 40
T
E 20
0
Baseline BBM #1a BBM #1b BBM #2a BBM#2b
LESSON

Figure 4.9: PAQT Scores for George’s Lessons

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Post-Lesson 2b Interview Highlights

During our post-lesson interview, Greg stated that “kids got much more from this

than folding origami or using fraction tiles – being able to analyze art and identifying the

fractions the artist used to create the art.” (Post-lesson interview, 5-29-15) He further

stated that he was surprised by how fractions became a very simple concept to grasp and

that his students did not appear fearful about fractions at all. He was especially interested

in how these first and second graders were able to layer two transparencies to get new

fractions, for example placing thirds on top of thirds produced ninths. He also felt that

being able to ask “why” questions took this work on fractions to a new level. “Why does

this look this way? What does the artist want me to see? What does the artist want me to

focus on based on how the piece is split up?” (Post-lesson interview, 5-29-15)

Student survey results

To collect information about students’ experiences in Beautiful, Beautiful Math,

Greg and I designed a paper survey form, administered during class on one of the final

days of school. The survey template can be found in Appendix F. Students took this

survey by hand on the next to last day of school. Their responses were overwhelmingly

positive, with comments ranging from “Beautiful, Beautiful Math is awesome!” to “It is

the best class ever!” In response to the question “What do you dislike about Beautiful,

Beautiful Math?” several responded with “The time is so limited!” and “There were not

enough of these lessons in my opinion.” Although this was a school with very engaged

students, the Beautiful, Beautiful Math lessons provided additional motivation and

enjoyment.
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Highlights from the Final Interview

The Brick School closed its doors at the end of the school year due to its inability

to enroll students. George is now teaching sixth grade in a public school, one that has

regular participation at the MAG. During my final interview with him, he expressed

excitement at being able to continue working on Beautiful, Beautiful Math lessons with

his new students: “Beautiful, Beautiful Math opened up a sense of wonder in my students.

My new school has a partnership with the Memorial Art Gallery, and I cannot wait to get

started there this September with my sixth graders.” (Post-Study Interview, 8-21-15)

Summary of George’s Experiences with Beautiful, Beautiful Math

With BBM lessons, George stood back more, talked less, and allowed his students

to spend much more time on their own and in small groups experimenting and grappling

with mathematical problems. Students had time to examine the art with George, when he

used the VTS questions, and also on their own. Instead of running a formal lesson in the

gallery or on the lawn of the MAG, George reviewed the art and the mathematics his

students were going to see at the MAG during his lesson the day before their visit, and

then allowed his students to very independently explore the art at the Gallery

independently, and then followed up with a more focused math lesson in school to

complete any calculations, review their results, and synthesize the mathematics. George

used Beautiful, Beautiful Math to enhance the teaching he did with Singapore Math. Both

of his BBM lessons required the use of mathematics skills and processes already learned;

they were not used to introduce new mathematics.

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George’s BBM lessons cycled many times through similar problems, which the

students themselves had to determine how to solve; George provided his students with

very few hints or suggestions. For example, the fifth and sixth graders determined the

three-dimensional approximate shapes, the volumes, and the weights of their sculptures

over and over. The first and second graders applied and re-applied their “fraction lenses”

to different works of art, over and over again. Thus, his BBM lessons took the

mathematics work deeper than before, but also provided an intense amount of practice.