Did You Say Movement in the Math Classroom?!

When is the last time you had your students moving around during your math class?  With all of the pressures we face to teach the standards and improve student achievement in math, we often overlook and under utilize teaching strategies that would actually help to improve achievement. Incorporating movement into lessons is one teaching strategy that is usually absent in many math classes.

Movement is an essential element for optimal learning. When you incorporate movement into lessons students are less bored, more engaged in the learning experience, and they have a better chance of remembering what they're learning.

Here are a few reasons we need to incorporate movement into our math classes:

• Movement increases blood flow in the brain.

•  Movement increases glucose in the brain. (The process of learning drains glucose, which fuels the brain.)

•  "Human beings are designed to recall better what we do actively than what we do passively." (Jensen, 2005)

• Movement has positive effects on attention.

There are many ways that you can incorporate movement into your classes. One of my favorite ways to get students up and moving is to use stations. My students always liked stations too! They enjoyed moving around the classroom and working together. Stations can be activities that students do, problems they work, or a combination. Many times, I'd just create 10 - 15 problems on whatever topic we were learning. We'd put the desks in groups and I'd give each group one or two problems. I'd give them about 3 - 5 minutes per problem. Once the time was up, they would get up and move to the next station. When doing stations with students, you always want to leave time for debriefing. Debriefing is actually when a lot of the learning takes place. During the debrief you want students to reflect on what they did at each station, what they were learning at each station, what they had trouble with, which strategies for solving problems are most efficient, etc.

Rather than just having students work problems on a worksheet, you can get them moving. Another one of my student's favorite activities is a Measures of Central Tendency Activity.

Measures of Central Tendency Activity

I've used this activity with my students as a way to practice finding the mean, median, mode, and range of a set of data.  My students have always loved this one!  They liked getting to interact and learn things about their classmates while practicing their math skills.

I always introduced this activity with a personal story about sending/receiving text messages.  This always grabbed student's attention before introducing the activity.  I've used this activity with my students as a way to practice finding the mean, median, mode, and range of a set of data.  My students have always loved this one!  They liked getting to interact and learn things about their classmates while practicing their math skills.

Procedures for the Activity:

• Pass out Measures of Central Tendency Activity Sheets

• Students will go around the room having various classmates answer the questions on the top of the Activity Sheet.

• Each student can only answer 3 questions (fill in 3 squares) on a classmate's Activity Sheet.  (This is so they will get responses from more students in the class.  Depending on your class size, you may want to increase or decrease the number of times each person can sign one Activity Sheet.)

• Limit the time students have to get their Activity Cards filled out.  Give about 10 minutes for this part of the activity.  That is enough time for most students to get it done. 

• Have students calculate the mean, median, mode, and range for each column on their Activity Sheet.

• Have students answer follow-up questions.

Central Tendency Activity Recording Sheets

You can download the activity recording sheets from Scribd.
Central Tendency BINGO Card Activity

You could add choice to this activity by putting a list of questions on the board and having students choose their own 5 questions.



If you have some ideas or favorite activities for getting students up and moving during math, please leave a comment and share with us.