Education Week just released a highly informative article summarizing what has been learned from a decade of federally funded research into math instruction.
I enjoyed reviewing these findings again. The research has been very advantageous. At Ascend Education, we developed 80 new math lessons over the past two years taking advantage of these findings bringing our total objective count to over 600. Much of the research strongly supports the use of the hands-on Explorations found in Ascend Math. In addition, the research findings below are supported in the newly constructed Compasses (Teacher Guides) for the Explorations.
“Using gestures and physical movement can help students better understand math concepts. For example, teachers [can use] gestures to simulate actions, such as placing their arm at different angles to simulate the action of altering the slope of a line,” says the report.
You’ll find this excellent article at http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2016/07/research_on_math_teaching_what_weve_learned.html