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Maths in Motion �

Dr. Robyn Gandell

Professional teaching Fellow, University of Auckland

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Agenda

  • Background
  • Why use movement
  • Movement activity
  • Research
  • What should we do
  • Activities for the maths classroom
  • Questions

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My Background

  • Dancer

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  • Physiotherapist

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  • Parent

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  • High school dance and mathematics teacher

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  • Bridging education

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  • My interest

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Why use movement in maths class?

  • Communication
  • Express ideas in the mind
  • Support learning

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Movement activity – Smudge Skittle (Alys Longley)

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Research

Students think mathematically in movement

(R Gandell, 2024)

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“Thinking... does not occur solely in the head … bodily actions … are not clues for interpreting mental states. They are rather genuine constituents of thinking.”

(Radford, 2009, p. 111)

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Recent Neurobiological research

  • “a substantial amount of gestures are generated primarily independently of speech”
  • “a concept can be first expressed gesturally and later verbally”
  • “facts are correctly represented – independently of speech – in gestures”
  • “a risk that the genuine gestural message is neglected”

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Lausberg H. The Neuroscience of Gesture Production. In: Cienki A, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies. Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press; 2024:525-555.

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What’s happening?

Students

Mathematical thinking

  • First occurs in movement
  • Before words
  • Mismatched with words

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Teachers

  • Recognise movement as thinking
  • Encourage and support movement
    • Space for movement
    • Activities requiring movement (students trained to sit)
    • Vertical white boards
    • Use gestures/ movement
  • Assess maths knowing through movement

What do we do?

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Using Gesture

  • Yoon, C., Thomas, M. O. J., & Dreyfus, T. (2014). The role of conscious gesture mimicry in mathematical learning. In L. Edwards, F. Ferrara, & D.Moore-Russo (Eds.), Emerging Perspectives in Gesture, Embodiment and Mathematics. International Perspectives on Mathematics Education:Cognition, Equity & Society. Information Age Publishing

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Activities for the classroom �- Schaffer and Stern

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Geometry

  •  

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Measurement and Trigonometry�

  • Benchmark measurements (arm span, stride length, handspan, fingernail width
  • Who can estimate 5cm best?
  • Measure the area of …
  • Find the height of ….
  • Assessment
    • Present a video of your calculations
    • Everyone must show some part

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Statistics and Probability�

  • How tall are you?
  • What does your bag weigh?
  • Foot lengths
    • Find everyone with the same length shoes as you.
    • Stand in a straight line in your group, starting from the wall.
    • Take off one of your shoes and leave it where you were standing.
    • Draw a picture of your shoe on a sticky note and place your sticky note on the board with your group

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Modular Arithmetic task

In a game a ball is thrown clockwise around a group of people. The ball can skip people in a regular pattern – here the ball skips every second person (2 place jumps), but it could skip 3, 4 or more people. The game stops when the ball returns to first person.

6 people 2 place jumps 5 people 2 place jumps

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Find a general rule for when everyone gets to throw the ball.

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Physics

  • Dr Roni Zahar
  • Task – Walk around a bottle but keep in a straight line
  • Velocity – personal, group - angular

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Other ideas?

  • Adding, subtracting and multiplying vectors

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  • Multiplying matrices

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  • Algebra and equality

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  • “Concept cartoons” in space

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  • Students think in movement.

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  • How do we account for that in our teaching?

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  • Thank you

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  • Any Questions