Gestures!

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

Complementary gestures are illustrated as…

“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.”

From a New Scientist report of an experiment with 160 primary school children. I can carry on waving my hands in lessons basking in the glow of peer reviewed evidence!

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