Math Manipulatives

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A Positive Outlook on Math Manipulatives

Math manipulatives have been around for years, but are now becoming increasingly popular amongst educators. Math manipulatives include anything from buckets of pattern blocks, trays of tiles, and colored cubes to virtual manipulatives, or manipulatives colored and cut out by the students themselves. All of these materials can help assist in tangibly teaching children math concepts and by pulling math off the page and into the hands of students. For a child to be verbally and physically taught a math concept allows them to think, reason, and solve problems with the teacher's guidance as well as on their own. Manipulatives can be used in lower levels by children making up stories with numbers that use a certain number of blocks to learning decimal places and place value in older grade levels.

It is important for the teacher to show how manipulatives relate to the lesson. The difference between a manipulative and a toy needs to be clearly drawn out for the children. Ground rules for using manuplatives need to be laid out as well. Since some manipulatives may be costly and the money for them may sometimes come right out of the teachers own pocket, a sense of respect toward the teacher and manapulatives needs to be established. Manipulatives need to be looked upon by the students as a privilege. They do need to have fun with them though and, most of all, they need time to explore on their own with the manapulatives to get used to the idea of them.

Variety and number of manipulatives are good. Many different lessons may require many different types of manipulatives or a large number of manapulatives. Costly manipulatives may not always be necessary. Manipulatives can be made by the...

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... http://mathforum.org/t2t/faq/faq.manipulatives.html.

Burns, Marilyn. "7 Musts for Using Manipulatives," Scholastic.com/Illustrator (June 1996), 1-2.

Math Teachers Press. 2005. "Manipulatives are Key." http://www.movingwithmath.com/summer_math/manipulatives2.htm

Region Ten Mathematics. 2006. "Why Do They Play With Blocks?"

http://users.ntplx.net/~region10/regiontenmathpages/region10mathsitefaq/whyplaywithblocks.html

Burns, Marilyn. 2006. "Manipulatives in Today's Classroom" http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/instructor/letter.htm

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