One Hour of Kinesthetic Learning Helps Gilbertsville Students

Math & Movement Founder and CEO Suzy Koontz led a one-hour virtual multiplication lesson for a 3rd grade class. The class consisted of 12 students at a public school in rural upstate New York.

The class’s participating teacher previously taught her students to skip count by 8s to the tune of a familiar song. She encouraged the students to jump on the Math & Movement Skip Counting by 8s floor mat while they sang the song. (The song was just numbers and did not have any words as part of the lyrics.) As a result, the students began the one-hour lesson with a solid knowledge of skip counting by 8s. 

Suzy Koontz led the one-hour multiplication lesson virtually through Zoom to the class. At the start of the lesson, students completed a two-page multiplication by 8s pre-test. After the pre-test, students participated in an activity called “Soccer by 8s”. Then, students jumped on the Skip Counting by 8s floor mat. Each student had a turn jumping on the mat.

Next, they completed an activity called “Basketball by 8s”. Finally, students completed the post-test, which was the same multiplication by 8s questions as the pre-test.

As a result of the one-hour Math & Movement lesson, students significantly improved their multiplication by 8s skills. There was a 105% improvement in students’ post-test scores from their pre-test scores. Students increased their scores by an average of 40 points. 

After only one hour of practice, every student had a post-test score of at least 12 percentage points higher than their pre-test score. The students’ improvement underscores Math & Movement’s impact on learning efficiency and retention.