hand gestures and mathiness!

[aesc]

Hee! I came across this last night, and it's great!

Gestures Convey Message: Learning in Progress
Children who talk with their hands do better at math

Neuroscientists have found, for example, that the part of the brain that controls hand movements is often active when people are doing math problems. "As though you're counting fingers," Glenberg said.

[Washington Post article]

This explains a lot, and means there were probably a lot of little kids getting smacked in Rodney's first-grade class. And what a terribly cute mental picture that is, too.



May have to do a Hands of Enthusiastic Explanation picspam, because apparently research has also shown that teachers who incorporate gestures into lecture/explanation are more effective.

ETA: And, as tx_tart points out, the potential to be really, really hot :>

Comments

[pollitt.livejournal.com]

Hands. *guh*

I can just imagine Rodney, mid-lecture with his hands moving--up, down, showing examples of this and that, holding the Dry Erase marker in his hand like a mad conductor--explaining some theory or equation, and the entire class is rapt. I would even go so far as to say there's more than a couple of students with "Love You" written on their eyelids (ala Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark).

And John would be in the back corner, top left, Rodney's left, leaning back, arms crossed, watching with that grin on his face because he knows what those hands are capable of. The mathematics of touch, the ratio of skin touched to the speed of John's breath and heartbeat, how Rodney knows angles and curves of John's body and how their bodies fit together in perfect compliment.

Plus, whispering complex number structures and theorems (not to mention the new Mersenne conjecture) gets Rodney hot and bothered and John really, really likes when that happens ;)

[aesc.livejournal.com]

The mathematics of touch, the ratio of skin touched to the speed of John's breath and heartbeat, how Rodney knows angles and curves of John's body and how their bodies fit together in perfect compliment.

*produces small, incoherent noise*

asdlkjf oh that's absolutely perfect. meeeeep yes, perfect, wonderful geometry.

[pollitt.livejournal.com]

<>*produces small, incoherent noise*

*g* I've been itching to write but packing has been eating my time. Thank you for the opportunity to flex the fingers a little. The boys were glad to be let out to play for a couple of moments :)

meeeeep yes, perfect, wonderful geometry.

I may've just packed up a Calculus book and had math on the brain (+McShep). Thank you.