Watch a team of fifth-grade teachers share how they used science theater to help students understand how dye molecules in chromatography. The teachers identify the importance of active movement and familiar metaphors to support understanding of unobservable explanatory ideas.
Engaging in kinesthetic learning can enhance access to complex ideas and expand what learning looks like in science. Further, integrating the mind and body resists dividing these ways of knowing and privileging one over the other.
Also, see our example from a dual-language classroom, with a critical equity stance.
Read more about how science theater can resist a mind-body divide: Varelas, M., Kotler, R. T., Natividad, H. D., Phillips, N. C., Tsachor, R. P., Woodard, R., Gutierrez, M., Melchor, M. A., & Rosario, M. (2022). “Science theatre makes you good at science”: Affordances of embodied performances in urban elementary science classrooms. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 9(4), 493-528.
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This site is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Award #1907471 and #1315995