How to Use Manipulatives in Math Professional Development
While one tends to associate math manipulatives with classrooms for young or early-elementary school children, manipulatives can play an important role in education for older children and especially in the professional development of teachers at all levels. Math manipulatives help to make abstract concepts concrete, enable teachers to accommodate children who learn in different ways from each other, and address teacher insecurities about teaching math.
Things You'll Need
- Math manipulatives suitable to concepts being taught
- Printed training materials
Instructions
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Provide enough manipulatives for teachers being trained to have individual access to them. A large set of base-10 blocks can be divided so that teachers gain direct, hands-on experience with the concepts you are teaching. For example, show and have teachers duplicate building a bar graph using blocks. Let teachers individually work out teaching fractions with blocks or pie-chart pieces. Having teachers work with you makes learning far more active than just having them watch.
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Provide a variety of manipulatives so that teachers can experience solving problems in different ways. A teacher with a tight supply budget may not be able to afford some manipulatives, but can be stimulated to use others. Include some that can be teacher-made; you can count by 5s just as well with dried beans and an empty egg carton as with clown-shaped counters and color-matched bowls. Small gift boxes, cylinder-shaped containers (like oatmeal boxes and cans) and paper cones may be an unglamorous approach to concepts of volume and solid geometry, but they convey the concepts for free.
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Challenge teachers to use or invent manipulatives that teach a math concept in more than one way. This addresses issues of teaching style (a teacher may find Cuisinere rods boring, for example, and therefore thinks her children will, too) and issues of different learning styles among children. Teachers both learn and teach at their best when they are confident in using materials. Set out some problems that welcome flexible solutions--2(a+b)=100 can be solved using a variety of numbers, for example. Stimulate teachers to not just come up with the varied numbers, but also using varied manipulatives that can teach solving the problem.
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Examine teachers' use of manipulatives to assess their own understanding of the concepts you are teaching. Teachers will do this in evaluating student understanding. Lack of enthusiasm for manipulatives, direct copying of your use and nothing more, or reluctance to try using manipulatives may indicate a deeper insecurity with concepts being taught than with materials used to teach. Teachers whose own math learning has not been adequate may stick very close to the textbook, provide large numbers of drill exercises, and blame the book and students for instructional outcomes. Remember that teachers, like all adults, are less likely to admit ignorance than their younger charges.
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