Gesturing with hands is a powerful tool for children's learning

A recent study from the University of Chicago's Department of Psychology showed that use of abstract gestures is a powerful tool for helping children understand and generalize mathematical concepts. 

Credit: Goldin-Meadow Lab

Children who use their hands to gesture during a math lesson gain a deep understanding of the problems they are taught, according to new research from University of Chicago's Department of Psychology.

Previous research has found that gestures can help children learn. This study in particular was designed to answer whether abstract gesture can support generalization beyond a particular problem and whether abstract gesture is a more effective teaching tool than concrete action.

"We found that acting gave children a relatively shallow understanding of a novel math concept, whereas gesturing led to deeper and more flexible learning," explained the study's lead author, Miriam A. Novack, a PhD student in psychology.

The study, "From action to abstraction: Using the hands to learn math," is published online by Psychological Science.

The researchers taught third-grade children a strategy for solving one type of mathematical equivalence problem, for example, 4 + 2 + 6 = ____ + 6.

They then tested the students on similar mathematical equivalence problems to determine how well they understood the underlying principle.

The researchers randomly assigned 90 children to conditions in which they learned using different kinds of physical interaction with the material.

In one group, children picked up magnetic number tiles and put them in the proper place in the formula.

For example, for the problem 4 + 2 + 6 = ___ + 6, they picked up the 4 and 2 and placed them on a magnetic whiteboard.

Another group mimed that action without actually touching the tiles, and a third group was taught to use abstract gestures with their hands to solve the equations.

In the abstract gesture group, children were taught to produce a V-point gesture with their fingers under two of the numbers, metaphorically grouping them, followed by pointing a finger at the blank in the equation.

The children were tested before and after solving each problem in the lesson, including problems that required children to generalize beyond what they had learned in grouping the numbers.

For example, they were given problems that were similar to the original one, but had different numbers on both sides of the equation.

Children in all three groups learned the problems they had been taught during the lesson. But only children who gestured during the lesson were successful on the generalization problems.

Susan Goldin-Meadow

"Abstract gesture was most effective in encouraging learners to generalize the knowledge they had gained during instruction, action least effective, and concrete gesture somewhere in between," said senior author Susan Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology.

"Our findings provide the first evidence that gesture not only supports learning a task at hand but, more importantly, leads to generalization beyond the task."

"Children appear to learn underlying principles from their actions only insofar as those actions can be interpreted symbolically."

More information: Miriam A. Novack, Eliza L. Congdon, Naureen Hemani-Lopez, and Susan Goldin-Meadow. "From Action to Abstraction: Using the Hands to Learn Math." Psychological Science 0956797613518351, first published on February 6, 2014 DOI: 10.1177/0956797613518351

Carol Vorderman's Online Maths School

Maths anxiety: the numbers are mounting

Maths anxiety, a feeling of fear about maths, is believed to affect about a quarter of the population, which would equate to more than 2 million schoolchildren in England alone, along with thousands of teachers.

Many of us are familiar with that blind panic when faced with a maths problem we can't fathom, but maths anxiety isn't always recognised or understood.

Maths anxiety was first identified in the 1950s, but the devastating way it affects performance is only now becoming evident.

For the first time, researchers at Stanford University in the US have used scans to see what goes on inside the brains of children with maths anxiety, and discovered that they respond to sums in the same way that people with phobias might react to snakes or spiders, showing increased activity in the fear centres.

This in turn causes a decrease in activity in the problem-solving areas, making it harder to come up with the right answers.

Dr Vinod Menon, the professor who led the project, explains its significance: "Our research is important because it is the first to identify the neural and developmental basis of maths anxiety, and our findings have significant implications for its early identification and treatment.

It is also important because it shows that math anxiety in children is real. It cannot be wished away. It needs to be attended to and treated if it persists."

If maths anxiety has such a devastating effect on ability, why aren't we doing more about it? Most teachers and academics know it exists, but there are no formally established diagnostic tools to determine when worrying about maths becomes "maths anxiety".

What's more, it can be counterproductive to tell a child that they have a problem, as Mike Ellicock, chief executive of the charity National Numeracy, explains: "Labelling and categorising children into those who can and can't do maths isn't helpful.

There's nothing more certain to be a self-fulfilling prophecy … but given encouragement and the right support, everyone can meet a functional level of numeracy."

We clearly haven't been offering the right support, as almost half of the UK's adults are only capable of basic maths. It doesn't help that we often see maths as the preserve of a few geeks.

Maths is a clear-cut subject where answers are either right or wrong, and teaching methods focusing on quick recall, mental arithmetic and on answers given in front of the class are unhelpful to those who are less confident.

Most teachers understand that confidence is as important as competence when it comes to maths achievement, but Peter Lacey, of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, says they are often constrained by a system focused on targets and attainment levels.

"If you say slow down, ministers get concerned, but if you want to build a tall and secure house, you make sure your foundations are right. Sometimes there's a rush in the earlier years of teaching that interferes with children gaining real confidence, once it goes wrong at that stage, everything afterwards is insecure.

The pressure to get children to a particular level in tests at 11 can mean teaching them tricks to get good outcomes rather than making sure they are confident in their understanding."

Experts in the field, such as Professor David Sheffield of Derby University's Centre for Psychological Research, who is one of the country's leading specialists in maths anxiety, believe it has a lifelong effect.

So what would he advise? "The first thing to say is don't do more maths. More maths is unlikely to work because it's actually an anxiety problem. Try to deal with the anxiety with simple approaches like relaxation or breathing exercises. We did one study where we got people to do a relaxation exercise and then followed them up. Their anxiety scores had dropped and they were able to solve more problems."

Children with Dyspraxia have problem with coordination and movement, so it is important when they have a problem like tying shoe laces or even playing sport is to keep practicing until they get it right.

Clearly, this seem simple but it is also important not to stress the child, these children will get easily stressed and its important to make it a game and not to show any failure, so its important to approach any activities is little stress as possible and there is no failure but fun.

You might say this is easier said than done. If a child has difficult learning to tye shoe laces, you simply get them to learn little put often and give them a reward to learning so there is reason for their success.
Simple techniques:-

• Little but often
• Make it fun
• Goal for achieve at the end of each session of trying
• Goal for achievement when they reach the end goal
• Make it fun (don't make it stressful, if the child starts to get stressed stop and do something completely different)

For more information go to the Dyspraxia Advice website

Sunbird Educational Products Fruit & Veg Maths - YouTube

Fruit and Veg Maths is a truely interactive maths resource. Not because it can be used on an electronic whiteboard but because it can be manipulated by the teacher and/or the students.

It’s colourful and bright and guaranteed to keep your students engaged in maths lessons. Our resources are created to show students that maths lessons can be fun and interesting.

Fruit and Veg Maths allows children to practise real world situations when they are given a shopping list and have to calculate the cost.

Sunbird Educational Products

Dyscalculia: Maths Games for children

The keen2learn range of educational games for maths has been selected to bring fun into helping practice learning in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Help them learn about fractions, decimals, money, counting and telling the time. The games are ideal as a teaching resource for learning in the classroom fun practice at home from early years learning through to GCSE.

Visit the Keen-to-Learn website and decide for yourself!

Marble adding machine - YouTube

Canadian software developer Matthias Wandel enjoys spending his spare time creating wooden contraptions that combine a childlike sense of wonder with an engineer’s knowledge of mechanics. One of his most popular creations so far is this six-bit binary adding machine, which has tallied nearly one and a half million views on YouTube. As Rick Regan explains at Exploring Binary, the machine functions like a low-tech integrated circuit. “It uses wood instead of silicon, gravity instead of voltage, and marbles instead of current,” he writes. “We don’t need no stinkin’ CMOS!”
The idea came to Wandel after he noticed that one of his earlier marble machines incorporated logic-like elements. “It had occurred to me,” he writes on his woodworking site, “that perhaps with an insane amount of perseverance, it might be possible to build a whole computer that runs on marbles.” To illustrate the point Wandel built the adding machine, which stores the binary states of six bits and can add numbers from one to 63. The result may be more cool than practical, writes Regan, “but it certainly is educational. It illustrates basic principles of binary numbers, binary arithmetic, and binary logic.”
You can learn more about the machine on Wandel’s Web page, and about the underlying logic and mathematics at Exploring Binary.

Channel 4 TV Highlights Failing Number Skills in UK Children

In 2009 more than one in five children left primary school having failed to grasp the basic maths skills required by the national curriculum. In a two-part special, Dispatches asks why and how are we failing Britain's children when it comes to maths.

Dispatches follows a class of final-year pupils at Barton Hill Primary School in Bristol as their staff adopt a radical approach to teaching, in a bid to improve the maths ability of these children before they head off to secondary school.

The problem couldn't be more urgent. Research shows that failing to grasp the fundamentals of maths at primary school leaves only a one in ten chance of catching up by the age of 16.

Dispatches hears from leading lights in the worlds of business and academia - including the CEO of Sainsbury's, Justin King, and George Davies, formerly of Next and Asda - about the impact on the economy and on adult life of leaving school without basic maths skills.

In a provocative nationwide exercise, Dispatches examines the standard of primary maths teaching in this country by testing the teachers. No tricks; just 27 questions that a bright 11-year-old would be able to answer. The shocking results are revealed in the programme.

You can play a shortened version of the maths test by clicking the 'maths quiz' link in the left-hand column of the Channel 4 website page here.