[NAEP] Fwd: Students learn more from teachers who hand-wave

[Dawn Wiseman]

Get your hands in the air.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Students learn more from teachers who hand-wave
Date: 	Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:20:13 -0900
From: 	M. Pamela Bumsted, Ph.D. <hlthenvt at mochamail.com>
To: 	FYI Teachers:;, FYI Teachers:;
CC: 	FYI Teachers Quick Topic <qtopic+26-7sSUC5pTZDRNV at quicktopic.com>



"Saturday, February 18, 2006
Students learn more from teachers who hand-wave
Math teachers who wave their hands while talking in a way that illustrates 
a point differently from their words impart more information to their 
students. The UChicago researchers determined that students whose teachers 
hand-wave learn more, and that when the hand-gestures illustrated a point 
to one side of the main point, they did even better.

    As part of the experiment students had to complete the equation 
"7+6+5=?+5". Teachers told the youngsters that they had to make one side of 
the equation match the other side.

    The gestures simply duplicating these directions involved the 
instructors pointing to the left-hand and then the right-hand sides of the 
equation. When using complementary gestures, however, the teachers pointed 
to each of the numbers on the left and then signalled the subtraction of 
the five on the right side by scooping their hand away from the number.


http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/18/students_learn_more_.html

"Hand waving boosts mathematics learning

    * 11:48 18 February 2006
    * NewScientist.com news service
    * Roxanne Khamsi, St Louis

Gestures that complement rather than simply illustrate verbal instructions 
can boost children's ability to complete problems in mathematics, 
researchers report.

"The teachers are giving the kids two different approaches to the problem - 
one by hand and one by mouth - and somehow they seem to complement one 
another," says Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, US. She 
adds that early findings also show that students who copy the gestures of 
their teachers are more likely to learn.

Goldin-Meadow and her colleagues gave 160 children between the ages of 
eight and 10 a set of mathematical problems to solve. The students were 
randomly assigned to receive either verbal instructions alone or also with 
gestures. Those in the latter group either received gestures that copied or 
complemented the spoken guidance.

As part of the experiment students had to complete the equation 
"7+6+5=?+5". Teachers told the youngsters that they had to make one side of 
the equation match the other side.

The gestures simply duplicating these directions involved the instructors 
pointing to the left-hand and then the right-hand sides of the equation. 
When using complementary gestures, however, the teachers pointed to each of 
the numbers on the left and then signalled the subtraction of the five on 
the right side by scooping their hand away from the number.
Sign of success

Children who saw the complementary gestures did best, solving three of the 
four addition problems correctly, on average. By comparison, those children 
who witnessed simple illustrative gestures typically solved fewer than two 
of the problems correctly. And students who received only verbal 
instructions solved only one of the four problems correctly, on average.

Hannes Vilhjalmsson of the University of California, Los Angeles, US, who 
studies the use of gestures, says that the results are important as one 
would not expect complementary hand signals to be more helpful than 
reinforcing signals. "It's counter-intuitive," he says.

The work presented by Goldin-Meadow at the 2006 American Association for 
the Advancement of Science annual meeting in St Louis, Missouri, on Friday 
also suggests that children also learn better when they use gestures as 
well. "When we get them to gesture more it turns out that they learn more, 
so gesture, in general, is good for learning," she says."
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8742&feedId=online-news_rss20