麻豆传媒入口

At , a pre-K to eighth-grade public school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, the students play theater games throughout the year in every grade. In addition to helping students develop social and emotional skills, make deeper connections to academic content, and exercise executive functions, theater games can be great warm-up activities to get learners primed to dive into the curriculum. In teacher Katie Giordano鈥檚 fourth-grade classroom, one of the students鈥� favorites is 3 Noses, an active math warm-up game they learned from , an arts organization that helps schools integrate theater and improvisation as powerful tools for education. 

In 3 Noses, the game starts with everyone getting up and moving around the room. Then, Giordano calls out a number and a body part: 鈥�7 arms!鈥� or 鈥�28 fingers!鈥� for example. Students scramble into small groups as quickly as they can, adding up the body parts to arrive at the correct number. When Giordano rings a bell to make everyone freeze, the students share out their reasoning group by group. They can use any method for calculating their totals: skip counting, multiplication, adding, or whatever comes to mind first. Sometimes Giordano adds a motion to a round, like hopping, skipping, or twirling, to bump up the excitement.  

The game is fast-paced, kinetic, and fun鈥攁n excellent example of the power of to make learning stick and a great way to practice math facts, since students must explain their thinking after each round. It also encourages kindness and inclusion, as students make adjustments to ensure that every classmate fits into a group.

For more theater games specifically to support math learning, check out the article that Child鈥檚 Play NY founder Jocelyn Greene wrote for 麻豆传媒入口, 鈥�Using Theater Games to Support Students鈥� Math Skills.鈥�