Active Maths: Learning by Doing, Not Just Thinking

More than just a movement break

A few weeks ago, Davies Sports asked me if I could help teachers get the most out of their new Active Maths kit.

I said yes pretty quickly.

Partly because I always enjoy working with the Davies team, but mainly because as soon as I opened the box, I could see what the equipment could make possible.

So I gave myself a simple brief:

Create maths activities that are properly active and genuinely fun, without losing sight of what children actually need to learn.

That last bit is the important part.

For me, active learning has never meant squeezing in ten star jumps between questions on a worksheet. There is absolutely a place for movement breaks. Children need them.

But that is different from using movement to actually teach a concept.

One is a break from the maths.

The other is the maths.

Maths + Movement

The lessons I’ve written for Davies Sports sit firmly in the second camp.

They are built around the UK maths curriculum, with every activity designed to help teachers teach and practise mathematical ideas through movement, equipment and hands-on activity.

Some work perfectly well in a classroom with the tables pushed back. Others need a hall or a patch of playground.

Children might build a number line with their own bodies, physically form equal groups, hunt for factors, estimate and measure distances, construct shapes to a set perimeter or work together to solve a number challenge.

The movement has to earn its place.

Children aren’t moving simply because movement is good for them, although of course it is. They are moving because it helps them see the maths, explore it, practise it and understand it in a way that sitting still sometimes doesn’t.

I keep coming back to one phrase when I talk to teachers about this:

Learning by doing and thinking, not just thinking.

Simple Ideas. Big Impact

Have a Look at this lesson I wrote for Davies Sports around Perimeters

A child can build a shape using their body or pieces of equipment, measure each side, calculate the perimeter and then change the shape while keeping that perimeter exactly the same.

Suddenly it isn’t just a formula on a page. It is something they have built, tested and changed themselves.

Or multiplication.

Children can physically create equal groups and then connect what they can see in front of them to the calculation on the board.

Four groups of three stops being a set of symbols and becomes four hoops with three beanbags in each.

Or number position.

Children can build a giant number line using numbered beanbags and explain why each number belongs where they have placed it.

That is when you start to see whether they really understand the concept.

It also gives teachers something incredibly useful: visible assessment.

Rather than trying to work out what a child understands from a completed worksheet, you can often see their thinking happening in front of you.

Whenever we create activities at imoves, there are four things we keep coming back to:

1. It has to be easy for the teacher to set up. Nobody has a spare hour before the lesson.
2. It has to be easy for children to understand, ideally in a sentence or two.
3. The movement and the learning need to work together rather than compete for attention.
4. Most importantly, it has to genuinely develop the concept being taught.

Because if an activity is brilliant fun but the children can’t tell you what maths they have just been learning, we’ve missed the point.

There is another benefit too.

While children are learning their maths, they are also adding extra movement into their school day.

Those minutes matter.

Not because every lesson needs to become a PE lesson, but because movement can sit naturally within the things schools are already trying to achieve: learning, concentration, engagement and wellbeing.

So I don’t really think Active Maths is about making maths more energetic.

I think it is about giving teachers another way to bring an idea to life.

If children can see it, move it, build it, test it and talk about it, there is a very good chance they are thinking deeply about it too.

And if they enjoy themselves along the way, even better.

Want more active learning - try our 28 Day Free Access - and enjoy moving to learn.