Chapter 12: Mirror, Hands and Eyes

Creating gestures for core knowledge is a common challenge in WBT.  For example, a gesture for active verbs is churning your arms like you are a steam engine; a gesture for passive verbs is folding your arms. Invent and describe gestures for three core knowledge terms (and don’t copy any existing gestures from WBT!).

Gestures are key in the cornerstone of WBT. Some of the gestures, which come in handy for me, are those dealing with the core subjects. Reading and Math seem to be the most utilized areas with gestures.

In reading, I use a few gestures with reading comprehension. Main ideas and details are shown as a flat hand and then fingers below. We discuss how a main idea needs supporting details like a table needs legs. So when I say main ideas we use a horizontal flat hand with palm facing down. Then for the details we straighten our fingers down to the floor as if they are legs to our table. As we read, we will discuss the main idea of a paragraph and then the details, which support this main idea.

Meta cognition is a large reading skill, which we show by pointing to our head then the text as we are reading. We say "when the books says ____ (and the point to the text), I think (point to head), because (use the because clapper)  _____."

In math, geometry is a great area that uses gestures. When we find the area of a polygon we use the gesture of an L with the thumb and pointer finger of one hand for length, crossed arms for the multiplication sign, three fingers in a w for width, arms in an equal sign, then two fingers for the squared sign.  It would go something like this, "length (L with the thumb and pointer finger), times (crossed arms for the multiplication sign), width (three fingers in a w), equals (arms in an equal sign), the answer, squared (two fingers for squared).

When we learn coordinate grids, we use our arms in a large L shape to show the x-axis and the y-axis. I tell the students to think of their armpit as the zero-zero mark. This always raises a chuckle! We also stand up and chant that you have to walk before you can jump when you are plotting points on a grid. This means you must go along the x-axis first (the first number in an ordered pair) then jump up the grid (second number in an ordered pair). We will actually walk and jump the axis when we practice plotting points! In order to distinguish the difference between the axis we raise our arms above our head and talk about how a Y has a long, vertical line just like the y axis go vertically.   

With the properties of math, we use the following gestures and words to describe the rules:

Commutative property: we chant, "It doesn't matter the order (move hands back and forth crossing each other), the answer's still the same (one arm over the other forming an equal sign in front of chest)."

Distributive property: we chant ‘distributive’ over and over while we motion taking a number from a closed fist and distributing it twice to the opposite side of the fist.

Associative property we discuss that if three friends sit together, two sit together, and one sits away it’s still the same as if one sits alone and two sit together. We chant ‘associate’ while putting our arms up in parenthesis around our neighbors.