3 Benefits of Using Art to Teach Hard Math Concepts Like Fractions and Decimals
Decimals are hard enough to understand, but fractions can be downright confusing!
If you’re wondering how to teach fractions or decimals in a way that it sticks, the best way to make sure they retain the information and learn it correctly is to present it in an artistic way that appeals to the senses.
It not seem like math fits in with art, but it does! This post will walk you through three of the most important benefits of using art to teach hard math concepts, like fractions and decimals. We can be more effective in the ways we help students access understandings. Concepts like the way in which students convert fractions into decimals and turn fractions into percentages do not have to be so difficult. It is all about using art as a teaching tool!
Teaching math through art is a best practice, and it really isn’t as hard as it seems.
Arts Integration: Teaching Math Through Art
If you’re looking for a way to add some extra fun into your math lesson plans, arts integration may be just what you need.
By mixing math in with art, students can better understand more abstracted concepts like fractions and decimals through concrete examples. For example, teaching students how to turn fractions into decimals can become a hands-on experience when paired with collages using scraps of fabric or paper that represent equivalent parts.
Arts integration is an effective way to engage students in lessons and teach them important concepts in new ways. Students are more likely to remember information if they learn it in different ways, making arts integration an ideal way to improve retention rates. Plus, it makes learning just feel like so much more fun! When math feels less like a chore and more like an engaging activity, students are much more likely to succeed in their classes.
Let's explore this a bit more by breaking this down into the 3 benefits of using art to teach math concepts.
#1 Student Engagement
If you think about it, art engages the brain in a way that most other subjects don’t. Master artists didn’t just come up with masterpieces by sitting at their desk—they were observing the world around them, sketching what they saw, sharing their ideas with others, looking for ways the things that make up the world are connected. And while some might equate art to free-form creativity, there are actually is math in art! I know - crazy!
So, that begs an obvious question:
Why should teachers make art a part of their lesson plans?
Because, it’s engaging. Students love art. They can lose themselves in it. It makes them think creatively and critically, not just about what they’re making but why they’re making it. No more scratching your head wondering how to teach fractions or decimals in an engaging way. This is the engaging way!
Teachers can use art as a way to teach hard math concepts like fractions and decimals because students are engaged by creating something new—something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. Even if you have kids who aren’t always excited about math class, you might be surprised at how much interest they have when you start incorporating some hands-on learning into your lessons.
Student Motivation: A lot of students see math as boring or frustrating or difficult—especially when it comes to fractions and decimals (or even percentages). But most would say there is no one more capable of making these concepts interesting than artists.
Making art isn’t just a way for kids to get excited about math class, it’s also a way for them to connect with their peers. When you have an entire classroom creating artwork together, you’re bound to spark conversations that can lead students toward common ground and help them better understand how they can learn from each other.
Here's the bottom line: Kids have to be engaged to learn. I can't tell you enough how unwise it is to teach repeatedly with worksheets and test prep drills. Kids just do not care about all that. We've burned them out with testing so much. Yes, I know we need to make sure our students are learning, and one of the ways we are held accountable for this is through standardized state assessments. I am keenly aware of the seriousness of state assessments. However, if we really want our students to learn, and to learn for the long haul, we have to engage them - why not put math in art?
We have to get them to care about what they are doing.
Art makes this so easy because kids are naturally curious about art, and they love to create new things. If you can connect the math concepts to looking at art and making art, kids will naturally care as much about the math as they do about the art.
#2 Broad Connections to the Real World
In order to teach fractions, it’s helpful to compare them with other math concepts and other concepts in the real world, like art. Understanding fractions as decimals, percentages or a part-to-whole relationship can help students understand fractional concepts that are seemingly abstract.
There are so many ways you can pair the visual parts of art with this seemingly abstract concept to make it more tangible. Think about a painting a picture and finding the part/whole relationship of the colors you used. It is really that simple when you pair the art and fractions. Kids can have a blast painting. Then, they can literally touch the parts and count them. It is really even better than doing this same concept with cereal or legos or any other manipulative you see teacher use with fractions. It's better because it is something the kid is invested in. It is their own artwork!
At this point, you may be wondering why I keep bringing up fractions, decimals, and percents.
Well, let me just take a moment to explain. These were hard concepts for me. I was a straight A student until I had to learn percent in math class. I just didn't get it. The teacher didn't help us see how it was connected to anything. It was a matter of just working out the numbers that same way every single time, and I just couldn't learn that way. I needed to make the connections.
Y'all, this was the first time (and only time) in my life that I made a big fat ZERO on an assignment in school. That's right!
I made a full fledged ZERO on our percentages test.
I remember it so well. It had 5 problems on it, and I missed them all. What's worse? The teacher didn't go back and help me remediate that skill. She just moved on. So, it was YEARS before I understood this concept. So, the whole fractions, decimals, percent thing is really a sore spot for me. And, I just do not want any other student to go through that. As you can see, it still burns me to this day!
Now that you have a better understanding of how easy it is to get kids connected through their own artwork, and a better understanding of why I am so passionate about this topic, let's dig in a little deeper about even broader connections. In the example we are using here, the concepts are every where. Here's a short list of some of the places part/whole relationships can be found:
money, board games (think Monopoly when you own 2 out of 4 utility companies), sports (think yard lines in football), baking, earth science, chemistry, physics, etc. This list could go on for days! The point is that there are so many places we can connect art and math, just like there are so many ways we can connect fractions with other math concepts.
#3 Potential for Long Term Retention of Math Skills
Even when we’re taught something in school, only a fraction of it sticks. (Fraction of it...See what I did there? LOL! Sorry about that.) Learning hard concepts, like fractions and percentages, through art can make them easier to retain when the time comes for the kids to take those high-stakes state assessments. Studies have shown that children remember math concepts better after they’ve done at least one step of an assignment with their hands. In short, if you learn fractions by converting them into percentages through an art making process or drawing artful pie charts, you’ll be more likely to remember them during your state test and beyond than if you just memorized equations. Giving students tools that helps them gain a deeper understanding of their math skills and how they relate to the real-world is best practice.
In reality, as much as we need our students to produce a test score for us at the end of the year, we need (and truly want) for them to remember what they have learned well into adulthood. We need highly functioning, decent human beings to be adults around here!
Using the arts to help the human beings retain all this knowledge we are imparting and all these skills we are instilling is just the most excellent thing we can do as educators!
Conclusion
Teaching children math through art is a creative way to present a concept. You may think that turning fractions into decimals would be an inefficient way to learn, but in fact, there are many benefits of using art as an educational tool.
Let's get real! If you made it this far into this article on this website, there's no way you think the arts are inefficient at teaching other content! Am I right? So, I am going to challenge you to go even deeper!
I have a masterclass all about bringing together angles and architecture. This is another math in art combo. In this masterclass, I will show you how to use architecture as an art form to teach angles and other geometrical concepts. By the end, your students will be able to identify and measure angles. Plus, they will be moving onto trigonometric concepts. Whoa! That’s a win-win.