Guiding Questions
Whole Body Math is not intended to be a collection of activities or lesson plans for you to follow. Instead, the intention is to invite you to co-create math activities that suit the children you work with. To help you come up with ideas to modify or change your lessons, we would like to share with you the guiding questions we used to design activities.
How can I change an activity to engage the whole body?
Very often, math lessons, activities, or worksheets can be made bigger to engage the whole body. By using colored tape indoors or chalk outdoors, you can create a ten-frame big enough for one child to fit in each space, basic geometric shapes for children to run on the sides and stop at the vertices, or a number line on which children can experience the physical act of hopping as they add and subtract. Thinking big is the first step to engaging the whole body.
One way of thinking big is to take common elements of math activities and create them in large, body-sized scale. The activity Big Dice Game took the dice, a common tool in math games, created big ones with tissue boxes and incorporated movement into the games. In the activity Human Number Line, a whole-body-sized number line was created on the classroom floor for practicing addition and subtraction, and in Number and Shape Hopscotch, children created number lines outdoors with chalk.
Another way of thinking big is to highlight the math in common whole body activities, such as big wooden blocks, recess games, and physical education activities. The activity Block Shopping provides an example of highlighting the math that is embedded in blocks.
In addition to making activities big, think about how to include different modes of sensory engagement. Many of our math manipulatives, games, and activities rely heavily on visual cues: color, shapes, and numbers. Could we include the sense of touch by finding pattern blocks buried in the sand table, or reaching into a bag to feel how many corners and sides a mystery shape has? Could we include the sense of hearing by dropping pennies into a tin pail while counting silently how many in total? Could we experience weight by lifting and carrying bottles filled with different volumes of water?
What parts of the body are engaged as tools to think with?
Seymour Papert coined the phrase “the body as a tool of which to think with.” What part of the body is engaged, and how are children using the body to think math? The most important tool we have on our body is our fingers. It is the reason why we have a base-ten number system. Encourage your students to use their fingers whenever they can, however old they are. Preschoolers enjoy songs and rhymes about numbers with finger gestures, while older students can use fingers to help count on as well as solidify math facts. In the activity Human Number Line, children hopped on a human-sized number line and gained a better understanding of the acts of adding and subtracting using their feet as a tool to think with.
What is the mathematical affordance of the space and the materials?
Affordance is a term coined by psychologist James Gibson, which refers to the possibilities that the environment provides the individual. Reggio Emilia inspired educators, who view the environment as another teacher and deeply value the role of materials and space in learning, often ask themselves: What is this material good at teaching? In our Mathful Play Group, we will ask ourselves: What kinds of possibilities do the materials and space provide for the individuals’ math thinking? What is the material/space good at teaching?
An example of the affordance of materials we experienced in our teacher researcher group was the use of rope versus masking tape in creating basic geometric shapes. We tried both materials and found that masking tape can more easily create a straight line than rope, which needed to be held taut by people at two ends. Once a whole-body sized shape is created, masking tape can also stick to the floor and stay in place more easily than rope. In other words, in conveying the math concept that each side of a basic shape is a straight line, the masking tape has greater math affordance. Masking tape also has the added affordance of its sticky side, which makes it more easily manipulated by young children than rope. Our experiences as teachers helped us design the activity Tape Shapes.
Who are the young mathematicians, how many are there, and what are their roles?
One of our greatest fears as early childhood teachers is our classroom turning into chaos, and whole-body movement has the potential to invite it. But instead of thinking: “my children won’t be able to handle this” and dismiss the possibilities of learning with the whole body, we encourage you to plan ahead based on your understanding of your students.
First to consider: what are your students’ prior experiences with moving in the classroom? Similar to any classroom routine, safe engagement in whole body learning takes practice. In this regard, there is much to learn from mindful learning, where children are intentionally taught to sense their energy, calm their bodies and mind, and become ready to engage fully. This book highlights the math concepts in these mindfulness activities, so you can incorporate them into your daily academic teaching time.
Second: how many children are engaged in this activity? Knowing your children, you might want to adjust the whole body learning as an individual, small group or whole group activity. Space could also be part of your consideration – is the activity indoors on the rug or outdoors on the recess yard? And finally, you might consider the time in the school year – the more experienced your children are with whole body learning, the more likely they can enjoy it together as a whole group.
Third: who are the actors and who are the audience or observers? Observers are particularly important in whole body math, because the actors often do not have a full view of the math that is happening. A classic example: young children tend to forget to count themselves when figuring out how many are present in the class. It is important for some children to be in the whole-body sized ten frame, for example, while others count, notice the changes, and count again. Be sure to have children take turns being actors and observers – the actors have a first-hand, physical experience, while the observers have a full view of all the math action. In the activity Building Shapes with Our Bodies, small groups of children presented the shapes they created while their peers discussed the geometric features they observed.
What discussion questions will help mathematicians reflect on their whole body experience?
Most likely, your math curriculum would have discussion questions for debrief or wrap up at the end of the lesson. Add a few discussion questions to help reflect on the whole body experience, which can be extended from the above guiding questions. For example:
- How did it feel to… (adaptation of activity, such as “use a giant ten frame”, “find shapes in the sand” etc.)?
- Which part of the body did you use? How did it help you think about… (math key concept or learning objective)?
- How did you use… (material or space)? And how did it help you learn… (math key concept)?
- What did you see/do/feel as an actor? An observer? What did you learn?
