Week 5 - Reading Summary and Activity

This week my reading was the article Movement-Based Mathematics: Enjoyment and Engagement without Compromising Learning through the EASY Minds Program by Riley et al.  It was published in EURASIA Journal of Mathematics Science and Technology Education in 2017.

The article described a qualitative research study carried out in Australian elementary schools where six grade 5/6 classes received “school-based physical activity integration intervention” where mathematics learning was integrated into physical activity with the intention to improve student interest and achievement in mathematics while at the same time providing needed extra physical activities.  The program was called EASY Minds, an acronym that stands for Encouraging Activity to Stimulate Young Minds.

Teachers were given a day of pro-d to learn the program, and then provided their students with EASY Minds activities for six weeks.  Following this, the teachers were interviewed and the students participated in focus groups in order to collect data.  Below is a table from the article with examples of some of the EASY Minds activities the students participated in during the study.

Following the EASY Minds lessons, students were asked if they enjoyed the lessons, and most responded that they enjoyed learning mathematics in a different way and found they were more engaged compared to doing pencil and paper lessons in their classroom.  They also reported that they enjoyed the “multi-tasking” aspect of these activities and thought it helped them learn the mathematics more effectively.

The four teachers interviewed also found the program enjoyable and engaging.  They felt it made difficult concepts more accessible and allowed students to have a deeper understanding of topics like statistics when the students were able to create their own data through the physical tasks.  Teachers reported that students helped each other more frequently and showed better understanding of some topics such as estimating and measuring distances.  Teachers stated that they enjoyed teaching the EASY Minds lessons, but also mentioned they took more time and effort to prepare.  All teachers stated that they would continue with these style of lessons after the conclusion of the study.

STOP – Whenever I read studies like this where teachers and students are trying new things, I always wonder about what I might call “the novelty effect” where students will simply report more enjoyment from novel activities that provide a break from routines.  Of course I’m sure some enjoyment does come from the embodied mathematics, but I’m sure some comes from “the novelty effect” as well – is this something that could be controlled for in the experimental design?  If every single math lesson was out in the playground or forest or what have you, would students then report that a math lesson on computers or ipads was more engaging than their usual mode of learning? 

STOP – As someone with a science degree who worked as a research biologist prior to becoming a teacher, I’m always a little surprised/shocked when I compare the methodologies of biology vs education research, and this study is a good example.  To gauge the efficacy and utility of the EASY Minds program, they just asked the 10- and 11-year old students what they thought about it.  I’m not sure how effectively students of this age can accurately gauge and reflect on their own mastery of mathematics.  I think the inclusion of control groups not given EASY Minds lessons and having quantitative assessments of learning carried out by teachers or researchers would provide more solid and convincing data.  Another example from this paper is that only four teachers were interviewed from two schools.  To me this seems like a very small sample size for peer-reviewed academic literature, but again my mind is somewhat “stuck” comparing these education studies to scientific studies.

STOP – In my experience, students who are interested and engaged in the lesson or activity almost always gain a better understanding compared to students who find the activity boring and useless, so this study certainly provides evidence of benefits to embodied mathematics learning.  If it helps students learn more effectively, it’s certainly worth a try.  Thinking of my math classes (grade 9s), I wonder what curriculum-based EASY Minds style activities I could do?  The scale factor/similar figures unit could include activities where students explored and measured the school grounds or a local beach or park and then made accurately scaled maps.   The fractions/rational numbers unit could perhaps include combining or separating out partially filled buckets of sand to explore adding fractions such as 3/5 + 7/8 or 2½ ÷ 3.  What else can you think of that aligns with the grade 8/9 math content?

Activity

Watching Sarah Chase's video immediately had me thinking about not just multiplying, but more specifically lowest common multiples, which I always review with my grade 9 students before we get into finding common denominators to add/sub fractions.  

As she mentions in the video, and as I discovered as I tried it myself, even a simple 3:2 pattern is at first pretty difficult to coordinate, but with practice you can start to feel the "rhythm" of the two numbers.  It reminds me of these drum challenge videos I recall seeing a while ago on YouTube:

Sarah Clark shows that it takes 6 movements to get back to the start since 3x2=6 but I think perhaps a better way to explain this is because the lowest common multiple of 3 and 2 is 6.  I thought of other examples that would work, like how 4:6 and 3:4 would both repeat after 12, and my feeble attempts at math dancing seemed to confirm this.

I think an engaging embodied math activity for students to explore lowest common multiples might be to have them do some polyrhythm drumming in small groups of 3 or so students.  To simplify things, I'd have each student do just one beat instead of two together.  With our school iPads they could use a metronome or drum beat app to find out how many beats it would take to return to the start of the pattern.  For example, one student could do 2 beats while another did 3 while the 3rd student tried to determine the repeating pattern.  There would be a number of different combinations and they could take turns with the different roles.  This would be a good activity for warmer times of the year when they could spread out outside to make noise as it would be likely too noisy inside a small classroom.

This could be integrated into the other classroom activities I do exploring multiples including comparing prime factor trees for different numbers and using them to find a common denominator to add and subtract fractions.  I'd have to brush up on my music theory a bit, but I wonder how time signatures in music is related to this topic... I'll have to chat with one of my school's music/band teachers about it.