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I wanted to take a moment to shout out two of my colleagues (Julian Rojas & Gemma Oliver) for adding a twist to the function dance activity that I really enjoyed. Some of you have done the function dance before, where students use their arms (and sometimes legs) to make the shape of a parent […]

I wanted to take a moment to shout out two of my colleagues (Julian Rojas & Gemma Oliver) for adding a twist to the function dance activity that I really enjoyed. Some of you have done the function dance before, where students use their arms (and sometimes legs) to make the shape of a parent graph, like in this diagram: Then students practice transforming functions by moving around as the function would (For instance y=|x| and y=|x-2| could be two dance moves. The first requires students to put their arms in the air in a V-shape like the absolute value graph. The second tells you to keep the shape but to step to the right 2 spaces.) My colleagues did a cool twist on this by changing it from function dancing to function yoga! Students acted out the same routine, but in a slower stretch-y way. It was so great and more manageable. My quick thoughts on this:

• The slowness allowed students think time to slowly move from shape to shape (less rushed than in some of the dance versions)
• The movement and stretching was great for the class.
• This could easily be a daily warm-up for the rest of the week (or the year!) to get students up and moving at the start of class while also reviewing math concepts.