Manipulatives

Manipulatives are multisensory tools that help students learn more by experiencing hands-on situations: building and creating, taking apart, combining shapes, sorting and classifying. They also provide students another form of communication, allowing them to build a model or represent their ideas concretely.

Young children should explore geometric concepts informally and intuitively.
The use of manipulatives is crucial. Sorting and classifying geometric figures in many ways provides children with informal analysis of the properties of these figures
before the more formal work in later grades.

(NCTM Curriculum and Evaluation Standards,"Second-Grade Book", Addenda Series, Grades K-6," pg 25)

Manipulatives should be incorporated into activities to help students explore concepts and build understanding. Manipulatives can be specifically designed and purchased, such as Polydrons , or as simple as a piece of paper. Manipulatives needed for TEAMS lessons are listed at the beginning of each student program. Use of manipulatives is not a guarantee that students will be able to make connections with the mathematics taught. It is up to teachers to facilitate lessons to help students discover and apply the mathematical concepts.

In order to learn mathematics, children have to actually do mathematics
for themselves rather than learn to follow how someone else does it.

(Beyond Arithmetic, Changing Mathematics in the Elementary Classroom, pg 13)

Suggestions for Implementation

• Give students time to explore a manipulative in an unstructured manner. This gives students a chance to get the "play" out of their system and to prepare them for using the manipultive as a tool.
• Take time to handle the manipulatives you
• Have rules for use and care of manipulatives. Non-compliance could be exclusion from using manipulatives for a short period of time.
• Begin with a specific manipulative for a lesson. Once a manipulative has been introduced, have them available so that students select the manipulative they feel can be used to best help them solve the problem.

Why Use Manipulatives?

Manipulatives encourage:

• concrete representations of abstract ideas
• exploration and discovery
• understanding
• active learning
• comprehension for kinesthetic learners
• communication and development of social skills.

References

TERC. Beyond Arithmetic, Changing Mathematics in the Elementary Classroom. Mokros, Jan, Russell, Susan Jo, Economopoulos, Karen. Dale Seymour Publications, 1995.