I cant take credit for all of these I was shown by another teacher at my school but I did include some of my own.

point Place a singe fist on your chest.

line Put your arms straight out hands open to represent the arrows.

line segment Put your arms straight out with your hands closed to represents points.

Ray Put one arm straight out with a open hand and one hand closed on your chest.

Vertical parallel lines Place your arms in front of your chest with your elbows bent at 90 degrees with your palms open and facing each other. Think of it as if you were pulling a football into your chest with your hands on each end.

Horizontal parallel lines place your right arm parallel to floor bent at the elbow with your palm to floor. Then place your left arm under the right arm bent at elbow with about 8 inches in-between.

oblique or diagonal lines move vertical lines from the elbow like a windshield washer.

Intersecting lines Form an x with both arms palms open.

perpendicular lines Place your left arm parallel to the floor palm down. Place your right elbow on top of left hand at 90 degrees.

acute angle from perpendicular lines reduce angle less than 90 degrees

obtuse angle from perpendicular lines open angle greater than 90 degrees

Straight angle see line

4 corners start at perpendicular lines then slide left arm up until finger the tips of both hands touch. Then rotate your hands so now right hand is on top horizontal parallel to floor and left hand is vertical then slide right arm down so now you are creating a right angle with your left hand vertical and your right fingers touching left elbow.

Fantastic! I vote for those to be stickied. The explanations are a little hard to understand (just because the gestures are complicated), but I got all of them and most of those would be very helpful. I especially liked the line segment vs. line distinction.

I used these today! Line, line segment, and ray worked fantastically. I also used acute angle (but I just called it "angle," as we don't do acute and obtuse in third) and right angle. Fantastic, thank you!

Your welcome.

I am teaching 7th grade math.. I need gestures for the following terms:


Pi (as in 3.14)
square root

I am stuck on these two! Please help if you can think of anything.

Sara ... not sure if this will help ... but for Pi (3.14) I would bring an imaginary piece of pie to my mouth and then hold up 3 fingers, 1 finger and 4 fingers ... and as I did this I would say, "Pi is 3 point 1 4)
as to square root ... I would close four fingers around two fingers and then pull the two fingers out ... thus showing that for square root we find the smaller number (2) inside the larger number (4) ...

We did circles today, and my wife helped me come up with some fantastic gestures. They go in sequence:

CIRCLE: Draw a large circle from top to bottom with your two index fingers (each finger draws half of the circle.

CENTER: Point both fingers forward together in the center of the circle you just drew.

RADIUS: From the "center" gesture, move one finger from the center to the edge of the circle (the other stays put).

DIAMETER: From the "center" gesture, move both fingers out to the edge.

We don't do chords in third grade, so I didn't come up with a gesture with that (that's a tricky one).

I love your gestures for Geometry. I cannot wait to share them with the Geometry teachers at my school. As I am the inclusion teacher, I cannot be the one to "truly" make these gestures a reality. I do believe they will help kids learn. Keep up the awesome work. By the way, what has been your experience with Whole Brain Teaching with teenagers in Math class?

Thanks for your help... we are starting circles on Wednesday and using hula hoops to investiagate Pi, but for some reason I was getting stuck on gestures for this section.

jwhicks727 - I love the circle gestures, thanks for sharing those!

chanselor - I having been Whole Brain Teaching for two years, at two different schools (we relocated) and I love it. My students love it - and they are 7th graders. They always tell me that they are tired when they leave my class, I love that my students would be tired after math class. They LOVE Mind Soccer and Beach Ball Baffler - they love to be silly, and they love that Whole Brain Teaching forces them to be silly. I feel better about my job, I know that I am effective when I am Whole Brain Teaching - you can see it on their faces, hear it in their voices - they are always dying to know what comes next.

During our workshop today one of our fabulous 6th grade math teachers *Jennifer Eckert* shared her gesture for Isosceles Triangles. It is Eye-soscele Triangle, when you say "eye" you point to your eyes, then make a triangle with your hands, you have a pair of eyes just like an isosceles triangle has a pair of congruent sides...