{"id":4635,"date":"2019-05-23T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4635"},"modified":"2019-05-20T07:46:40","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T12:46:40","slug":"a-specific-movement-helped-specific-students-learn-a-specific-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/a-specific-movement-helped-specific-students-learn-a-specific-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"[A Specific] Movement Helped [Specific] Students Learn [A Specific] Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can Movement Teach Math?<\/h2>\n

Here’s a vital question: How can we help young students learn math better<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We’ve got decades of research showing that children who understand a number line<\/strong> do better at many math tasks than those who don’t. In fact, when we teach them to understand the number line, they get better at those math tasks.<\/p>\n

Researchers in Germany wondered if movement<\/em> might help kindergarteners understand the basic principles of a number line.<\/p>\n

That is: By moving their whole bodies to the left, they could see numbers get smaller. By moving their whole bodies to the right, they could see numbers get bigger.<\/p>\n

Does this kind of bodily movement help children think about numbers and math?<\/p>\n

The short answer: yes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When students compared numbers simply by checking boxes, they didn’t get better at various numerical measurements. When they compared numbers by moving left or right on a dance mat, they did — at least on some measurements.<\/p>\n

The specific application of this principle will depend on you and your students. But, to get the conversation started, we can say:<\/p>\n

Having kindergarteners manipulate a number line by moving left and right helped them understand some basic math better.<\/em><\/p>\n

Specifics Matter<\/h2>\n

I’ve seen lots of enthusiasm lately about movement in classrooms. While I’m all in favor of allowing — even encouraging movement — I think we need to be precise and careful about the arguments for doing so.<\/p>\n

The study cited above does NOT show that “movement helps students learn.<\/strong>” Instead, it shows that a particular<\/em> movement helped particular<\/em> students learn a particular<\/em> topic.<\/p>\n

Remember, earlier research had showed the importance of the number line. The researchers weren’t testing movement just because movement seemed cool. They tested it because the physical reality of a number line makes this idea so plausible.<\/p>\n

Imagine, instead, that the study methodology described above were used to teach students about colors<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Of course, unlike the number line, colors aren’t an especially spatial concept. So, it’s not obvious that this same teaching technique would have benefits for this kind of learning goal.<\/p>\n

To be clear: my point is not that movement is a bad idea. Instead, we should understand clearly why\u00a0this<\/em> movement will benefit\u00a0these<\/em> students while they learn\u00a0this\u00a0<\/em>topic.<\/p>\n

Maybe a particular movement fits with a particular cognitive process — as in the number-line example.<\/p>\n

Maybe movement helps re-energize droopy students.<\/p>\n

Maybe you’ve seen thoughtful research showing that students did better learning parts of speech (say) when they did hand gestures along with them.<\/p>\n

In each of these cases, you’ve got a good reason to incorporate movement into the lesson plan. We should not, however, default to a sweeping statement that students must move to learn.<\/p>\n

Your own teaching (and learning) experiences may show that — at times — quiet, motionless concentration create the very best learning environment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research shows that movement can help kindergarteners understand the number line — an essential concept for math learning in general. We should not assume therefore that movement always benefits learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,69],"class_list":["post-4635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-embodied-cognition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4635"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4644,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4635\/revisions\/4644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}