UW–Madison’s Mitch Nathan has been invited to deliver a presentation at an event for teachers in Santiago, Chile, focused on “Enseñando con el Cerebro en Mente / Teaching with the Brain in Mind.”
Nathan is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology, and an affiliate with the departments of Curriculum and Instruction and Psychology.
Nathan will deliver his presentation online on Thursday, Dec. 16. His talk, titled “Instructional Gestures: Handy Ways to Promote Comprehension and Learning,” will discuss how teachers’ use of gestures can enhance student learning.
Nathan will highlight two ways that using gestures can improve learning, explains a preview for the talk: “One is that gestures help establish and maintain common ground, which enables students to make connections between new ideas and things they already know. Another is that gestures help to make explicit connections between representations, such as connecting equations to graphs during STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) instruction.”
Nathan will also describe how gestures can help bridge language barriers, and discuss special considerations for online learning.