Act Out Numbers

It may seem that these students are not listening.  They may be dropping their pencil, tapping their foot, making faces and unable to stay seated.  Is there a learning disability here?  Aren't they usually boys?  We are discussing young elementary students, however they have probably been in a classroom setting for several years.  They know the drill.  You are looking at a kinesthetic or act out learner.  This is a person that benefits from movement, touching you when they are talking to you,  and touching items as they learn.  They like to watch demos and then imitate the actions.  Commercial magnetic numbers, number puzzles to touch and move around is effective in acting out his learning.  Lessons should be kept short with breaks that allow movement.  

Brain Gym is a book about exercises that teachers should use at the beginning of the lesson  to engage both sides of the brain.  It basically has you and your students twisting and moving arms and legs crossing the trunk of the body and stretching.  This activity is beneficial for all types of learning styles but I'm sure a relief for the acting out learners. 

As a math resource teacher, I came up with an interactive math activity that seemed to delight kindergarten and first graders.  This can be translated to higher grades with other areas of the curriculum.  I used one blank foam die that had white board material on all six sides.  With a white board marker, I would put a number sentence, ordinal word or even math words being taught at the time, something different on all six sides.  I may have a group of four to five students.  I also used a small white board or let one of the students keep score.  I put each students' names on the white board.  I would make the students stand back and tell them I was to roll the die and they could not touch it.  As soon as they solved or recognized the answer to yell it out!  The first person to answer correctly received a tally mark beside their name.  If there was a tie, then both students got a tally mark.  This continued until we got to five tally marks with the cross over.  Many of the students were just learning tallies, so we had a double lesson going on.  This game created much movement and excitement with added learning of data on the die.  I shared this with the primary teachers and suggested that it be used with reinforcing high frequency word recognition.  I will be offering this idea and the materials on my site later.  Our students get lots of opportunity to act out.

A floor number line that you can make is ideal for the kinesthetic or act out learner.  We can add and subtract, always starting with the larger number.  We can get on a number and jump back three to subtract,  or jump forward to add.    This also helps with the organization of lining up.  When the act out learners are moving and touching, the brain is engaged.

Another interactive game is "Guess My Number".  I went to a tile store and got basic least expensive squares of tiles for several groups of students.  With permanent markers, I numbered them 0-9.  I would make up describing facts about my number. (e.g. I am an even number, two digit, less than 9 tens, greater than 8 tens and my ones rhyme with great)

There are books at Creative Mathematics, Kim Sutton with innumerable ideas.

"Pass the Pen" by, George Woodbury's Blogarithm is another interactive game involving movement for the act out learner.  Mr. Woodbury uses this activity as a closure to reinforce a concept he has just taught in math.  A practice problem already taught is put on the board.  He says "pass the pen".  Students wanting to solve the problem will raise their hands to participate.  He will call on a student that does a preliminary step.  That student turns around and says, "pass the pen".  This creates excitement and attention as the student decides who to choose next.  This action continues on until problem solved.  It sounds like higher math, but it could be used for growing patterns, geometric shapes, number skipping, etc.

In conclusion, the act out, or kinesthetic math learner needs space, ways to learn by touching, movement and we can't underestimate interactive computer math games.

Look for my post on Math Manipulatives.  There are too many to name now!