Piamonte, Arnold H.

In the
Inter
media By

te
SOL CONCEPCION M. PAMAT
Instructress

Grade
April 2021

s
 Lesson
13
Use of Manipulatives

Objective:
Develop a manipulative to aid mathematical instruction

Introductio
n
Mathematics is an abstract subject, which is why many students
find it difficult. One way to concretize mathematics for young learners is
through the use of manipulatives.

Think

Manipulatives are concrete objects like blocks, tiles, and geometric figures
that the students can interact with (touch and move) in order to develop a
conceptual understanding of mathematics concepts. The use of manipulatives
is not at all new; manipulatives have helped people learn mathematics since
ancient times. For example, the early Chinese had the abacus and the Incas
used knotted strings called quipo to aid in counting. In modern times,
educators Friedrich Froebel and Maria Montessori were the ones who
advanced the use of manipulatives in classroom instruction. At present in the
Philippines, the DepEd mathematics curriculum calls for manipulatives to be
used in teaching a variety of competencies.

Aside from helping the students acquire deeper understanding of

mathematics, the use of manipulatives also gives you, the teacher, the cahnce
to genuinely assess their students’ mathematical thinking. You can move
around, observe, and take note of students’ discussions and ways of
manipulating. Moving around will let you give immediate feedback and taking
notes of observations will help you improve your future lesson.

One drawback of using manipulatives is that it may cause confusion,

especially to struggling students, if they are not presented with proper
guidance and instruction from the teacher. Moreover, careless use of
manipulatives might result in the students believing that there are two
different worlds of mathematics−¿the manipulative and the symbolic.
It is therefore important that the teacher carefully plan on how to integrate
manipulayives in classroom discussion in such a way that there is a smooth
transition from concrete to abstract. The following are some guidelines for
using manipulatives in the classroom.

1. Orient the students on how to use the manipulative. Give some time for
the students to play with the manipulative. Allow them to explore the object
and what they can do with it.

2. Give clear and specific instructions. State the goal of the activity and how
the manipulative can help them achieve the goal.

3. While the students are at work, pay attention to their mathematical talk.
Use their ideas to enhance the discussion that follows after the activity.

4. If some of the students are struggling, ask them “why” and “how”
questions to scaffold their way through the activity.

Experience

The following is an example of how a geoboard is used to reinforce the

understanding of different kinds of triangles. This activity may be done after
the students have learned the kinds of triangles according to angle measure
(acute, right, and obtuse) and according to side length (scalene, isosceles, and
equilateral). Sample of the student works are also presented.
Materials:

1. Geoboards

2. Rubber bands

Instructions:

1. Make an image with an equilateral triangle, an isosceles triangle, and a

scalene triangle.

2. Make an image with an acute triangle, a right triangle, and an obtuse

triangle.

3. Is it possible to have the following triangles? If it is possible, come up

with an example using the geoboard and a rubber band. Otherwise, discuss
why you think it is impossible to create such a triangle.

a. Equilateral acute

b. Equilateral right

c. Equilateral obtuse

d. Isosceles acute

e. Isosceles right

f. Isosceles obtuse

g. Scalene acute

h. Scalene right

i. Scalene obtuse
Assess
Answer the following questions to verbalize your understanding of the use
of manipulatives in mathematical instruction.

1. Give an analogy that invloves the use of manipulatives and the use of
games in classroom instruction.

Manipulatives: Making Graphs with Connecting Cubes Games: For Grade

3 to 6

Instruction

 Using connecting or linking cubes like those mentioned above, go to

work creating bar graphs! One great idea for little learners would be to
watch the weather over the course of a month and recording
observations by creating a graph of how many days are sunny, cloudy,
rainy, or snowy.

 Set up location around the house where the graph will not be disturbed
and lay out paper and label the bottom of the graph with the possible
observations. Each day at the same time observe the weather and add a
linking cube to the graph. Be sure to choose a different color for each
row on the graph! For example, mark sunny days using a yellow block.
At the end of the month, review the results and discuss!
 For older students, bring in more advanced concepts like fractions.
Challenge children to analyze the data to create fractions for the amount
of the month that was sunny versus the days that saw precipitation. For
instance, if ¼ of the month was cloudy, determine the amount of days
out of the month that were sunny or cloudy. You can even use the graph
to introduce the relationship between fractions and percentages!

2. The first guideline in using manipulatives is to let the students play

with the material. Why do you think is this so?

It is because using manipulatives games to the students makes sense of

concepts and sees the relationships between numbers. Props like measuring
cups, rulers, and countable objects that students can manipulate can make
math concepts less abstract. It can help the students to know the idea of what
problem solving they will answer. When students use objects, they take the
necessary first steps toward building understanding and internalizing math
processes and procedures.