My "normal" assignment is Reading/English with ESOL students, but this year, I am also co-teaching a section of 7th grade science and bringing WBT into the classroom.

I am looking for gestures for these terms:

control group
dependent variable
independent variable

I am sure I will have other words as the year progress!

Thanks in advance!

I decided to use ASL for now.

I wish I would have noticed your post when you first posted b/c I was also teaching nature of science at that time. I don't know if this will help you now, but here are some gestures that helped my fifth graders.

For the independent and control variables, we used our hand. We hold up our hand and for the four fingers we say "same, same, same, same" and then when we get to the thumb, we say "different."

So for your independent and control variables, you could use that same gesture but you might say "control, control, control, control" instead of "same." And when you get to the thumb, you can say "independent" instead of "different."

At our school we have a science teacher that uses the following:

Dependent Variable - she acts out walking with someone and holding their hand.
Independent Variable - she waves bye-bye
Control Group - she acts out as a dictator with a really mean face

She also uses DRY MIX: Dependent/Responding/Y-axis Manipulated/Independent/X-Axis

Hope that helps all you science teachers!

Dependent variable- hold up index finger and shake it in time as you say "the one thing we measure," on measure you hold hand together, one palm up, one palm down, raise them apart from one another to show a scale.

Independent variable- Shaking the finger again "the one thing we change," on the change hold your hands slightly apart as though holding a ball, move hands in half circles so that they change positions.