In this article, the author will demonstrate how gestures--often used in combination with offloading information on scratch paper--can be used to help students with difficulties in mathematics succeed with secondary level algebra. The authors will provide key examples from three studies of the algebra learning of students with mathematics difficulties (Hord et al., 2016; Hord et al., 2020; Hord et al., 2021). The examples will demonstrate some of the key findings from these studies.