Benefits Of Manipulatives

Manipulatives are concrete objects that children can use to make sense of and discover new concepts in math. They allow students to model math problems with physical or virtual tools and serve as supports for children to move from concrete to abstract thought. Manipulatives connect to Piaget’s concrete operational stage of development, or the stage in which children learn to think logically about concrete concepts like math. In this stage students are learning to think logically about problems, but they are limited to applying this to physical objects. It’s important to remember that students develop at various stages, so some might want or need to use manipulatives longer than their peers and making manipulatives readily available in the classroom is a relatively easy and extremely beneficial thing you can do for your students.

This goes beyond providing a wide range of manipulatives for students to choose from (which is beneficial) but tasks teachers with identifying what types of manipulatives lend themselves well to specific concepts, or the idea that tasks and tools go hand in hand. In the future this knowledge will inform my decisions about how to best approach new concepts and what I can do to help set my students up for success. As a teacher, having a variety of manipulatives at your disposal gives you the ability to give individual students the type of support they need to understand ideas and achieve goals; what works for one student might not work for another but having multiple options for them to choose from and connect with makes math concepts much more