Manipulatives Blog

I think one of the main ways to make sure kids are being held accountable when using manipulatives is for the teacher to make sure and circulate the room. Obviously this leaves some lag time that the students could get off task or only let one student do the work, so more would probably need to be done. Maybe each student could be held accountable for documenting their work with the manipulatives. Like we did in class with the manipulatives we had to write down what we came up with using the manipulatives. Something like this could be done with the students in our classrooms as well. Another way to hold the students accountable for the manipulative activities is to do one on one evaluations. The teacher could have each student model the activity they were suppose to do for them again in an assessment type format.

I believe that the reason people say "hands-on, minds-on" now instead of just "hands-on" is because of how interactive the manipulatives are now and how much it can help students understand concepts. If the student is working with manipulatives they are more likely to be engaged both physically and mentally rather then if they were doing a worksheet or listening to a lecture. "Hands-on, minds-on" helps recognize how engaged the students are with their activities and hopefully learning even more.

The process standards fit in very nicely with the use of manipulatives. Students must problem solve when working with manipulatives. They may have never seen a particular manipulative before so they must problem solve how to actually use the manipulative and work through the activity. The students will also be using communication as well if they are working with a partner. They will have to communicate their ideas to each other to be able to properly use the manipulatives. Reasoning and proof can also be addressed with the use of manipulatives. The students will need to reason through how they are working with their manipulatives and then prove what they have done works. Connections are also prevalent with the use of manipulatives. It is very easy to incorporate many different content standards with the use of just one manipulative and students will be able to recognize how they all work together. Finally, representation is used with manipulatives by the students representing different problems with their manipulatives.