The Importance And Benefits Of Math Manipulatives In Elementary Students

What is the most effective way to teach? Can students really learn and fully understand the material teachers convey to them on a day to day basis? According to a middle school mathematics teacher, his methods of teaching the traditional way was not as effective and producing a long-term impact as he would have liked. The article "Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say!" enriches us to the possibility of applying slight gradual modifications to our teaching methods and how we could find ways to utilize that information in the search for more effective teaching methods to encourage students to explain their thinking and become more deeply involved in the classroom discussions, thus developing their questioning skills (Reinhart, 2000). After

Using hands-on resources and manipulatives in mathematics is important for student’s development of mathematical content knowledge. Knaus & Featherstone (2014. p. 12) state that through the manipulation of objects in a mathematically rich environment children are able to achieve an understanding providing a bridge between everyday concepts and abstract concepts. Furthermore, manipulatives and play are linked. During play with manipulatives such as an age appropriately fill treasure basket children are able to explore a range of objects shapes, sizes, textures, weights, lengths and the mathematical language that is related to the objects (Knaus & Featherstone, 2014). According to, Connell, Shearer, Tobin and Harrod (2006) exploratory manipulatives provide students with the opportunity to explore their

As a math instructor, I love your topic. I think math manipulative are under utilized and math teachers have to be extra creative to help struggling students. I think your topic will give educators the support they need to help students who struggle in math. The only question I had was, are you expanding this topic to all middle school math skills or are you selecting certain math skills? Overall, I believe you have a great topic.

Yes should be incorporated into all subjects. Of the 10 things key professionals should incorporate into high quality math education, number 7 is prominent. It states, “integrate mathematics with other actives and other actives with mathematics” (Boyd 2008). When children at the early elementary level are processing knowledge they don 't have each subject sectioned off. When a teacher is teaching a lesson on math, a child doesn’t process that as we are doing math. There brains aren’t quite developed as a “cubbybox”, Therefore, if a teacher is incorporating math into all their lessons, there are many applicable ways students can use math without even knowing. For example, when a teacher assigns a project or investigation, students must use math to collect date, record information and any mathematical question.

According to Charlesworth and Lind (2010) in preoperational period children learn numbers through experimentation and practice. The role of teachers is to show children how to play with the manipulative and allow them to explore in their way. The teacher is a facilitator and observer. To engage children in exploration and independent play requires self-correcting materials like manipulative materials. The four types self-correcting manipulative math materials can be used to teach concepts such as:

According to Burns & Silbey (2000), “hands-on experiences and multiple ways of representing a mathematical solution can be ways of nurturing the development of this cognitive stage”. The importance of hands-on activities cannot be overemphasized at this stage. These activities provide students an opportunity to make abstract ideas concrete

Bottle (2005:84), in agreement with Drews, D (2013), posits that teachers need to have careful considerations when choosing appropriate manipulatives according to their understanding of whether the manipulative will support students in their thinking. Bottle (2005:84), in agreement with Drews, D (2013), posits that teachers need to have careful considerations when choosing appropriate manipulative according to their understanding of whether the manipulative will support students in their thinking. Bottle (2005:84), in agreement with Drews, D (2013), posits that teachers need to have careful considerations when choosing appropriate manipulatives according to their understanding of whether the manipulative will support students in their thinking.

In the article, “How Should Elementary Math Class Look and Sound”, I learned that math can be taught in ways where the teacher do more than just tell them the steps to solve a problem. Teachers can inhibit students to figure out the steps to take when solving and equation or a word problem. For instance, making the students read a word problem out loud and disaggregating the word problem piece by piece. Moreover, I also learned that by doing so it let students deepen their thinking about math and can sometimes help with the understanding. In addition, I have seen in the reading classroom I’m observing my cooperative teacher using a similar method. For instance, she will tell the students to tell her what they think the story they are about to

Although the hands-on learning approach requires a great deal of preparation time, once students have adjusted to the teaching method, the learning process becomes an enjoyable experience for both the teacher and the students (Berk, 1999). When teachers make use of hands-on activities to illustrate concepts in mathematics and science, students perform better on assessments in these subjects because their level of thinking and curiosity increase as a result of their active participation in the learning process (Wenglinsky, 2000).

I observed two different math classrooms for my clinical observation. The first classroom was in an urban school setting, grade two. The second classroom was in a more suburban school setting, fifth grade math. The second grade class period was ninety minutes long, the students rotated in groups to the teacher table and did a mini lesson there for about 15 minutes, while the rest of the 90 minutes was spent on a math website. The fifth grade class period was only 45 minutes long and the majority of what I saw was the teacher working with the students on correcting homework.

In one article by Uttal et al. (2013) it is suggested that a group of first and second grade students experienced difficulty in transferring mathematical information after being taught using manipulatives only. This research was done in a classroom where students learned to perform two-digit subtraction using a Digi-block system. During two days of initial pretests and instruction, the thirty second grade children (15 male, 15 female) did not differ significantly during with their scores with the pretest. The students were then grouped into control groups with manipulatives and without manipulatives, and given a post-test after the lesson to measure manipulatives instruction versus written instruction. A pattern of results that emerged were

Teachers in China and the US use different strategies to engage students to learn new mathematical concepts; US teachers prefer to organize introductory activities, while Chinese teachers usually teach new materials directly with no opening activities. For example, when teaching the procedure of fraction multiplication, most US teachers have students apply manipulations such as playing with money or drawing and coloring areas in order to evoke students’ interests. Data shows that 18% more teachers in the US than in China use manipulation. Conversely, Chinese teachers rarely rely on such manipulative activities. They tend to teach the concepts and methods using area and repeated addition. Unlike the US teachers, they illustrate the methods by suggesting real problems and showing the proper strategies to use for different problems. 91% of Chinese teachers give examples of problems to teach the rules of fraction multiplication, whereas only 4% of US teachers use the same method (An,

The piece is important since it helps in outlining if indeed the use of manipulative materials has significance on teachers performance and children learning across the grades. Various forms of manipulative learning are clearly elucidated such as pictorials and use of instructional conditions (talk more about them explain them why they important) that helps to outline the effectiveness of using manipulatives.

An article, I chose, related to teaching and learning mathematics for elementary students is “STEM Gives Meaning to Mathematics” by Lukas J. Hefty. This article is about how teachers can teach mathematics while teaching science. Teachers can do this by using “STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education” (Hefty, 2015, p. 424). This allows teachers to integrate science with math or math with technology. The article mentions that STEM “frees students to reason about complex problems, analyze multiple solutions, and communication ideas and results. They develop habits of mind along with the necessary mathematics skills” (Hefty, 2015, p. 424). On page 424, Hefty provides readers with a table which shows examples by grade level of how math can be integrated with science. Hefty stresses the importance of students “working collaboratively, communicate effectively, and design multiple solutions to complex problems,” in figure 1 on page 425 (Hefty, 2015, p. 425). In the middle of the article, Hefty gives readers an example of how to teach and integrate math and science. While students are working collaboratively, “teacher facilitators make purposeful connections that naturally integrate mathematics throughout the activities” (Hefty, 2015, p. 425). In the example lesson that the author gives the readers, the students use math to calculate the speed and distance of the car. After the students run their tests, they work together to determine the conclusions of the

With reference to the above statement please discuss how these children utilize their mathematical mind as part of their natural progression, to reason, to calculate and estimate with these Montessori mathematical materials in conjunction with their aims and presentations?