Skip to main content

Home/ UWCSEA Math/ Group items tagged symbols

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Sean McHugh

Ask the Cognitive Scientist - 0 views

www.aft.org/...willingham

Manipulatives research Maths

shared by Sean McHugh on 26 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Perceptually rich manipulatives reduced conceptual errors (children set up the math problem correctly) but increased other types of errors (e.g., calculation errors). Detailed manipulatives draw attention (which helps) but then may direct attention to irrelevant details
  • Helping a child understand the idea of fractions by dividing a circular pizza or pie works well until you encounter a fraction with the denominator 9. Or 10,000
  • students learned the concept more quickly with the familiar symbols, but transfer to different problems was better with the abstract symbols
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Even if students learn a concept with manipulatives and simultaneously learn it with written symbols, the two may remain separate, with students never drawing the connection between them
  • A simple review of key conclusions makes a few things clear. First, we must temper our endorsement of manipulatives in classrooms with some caveats; there are instances where manipulatives will not speed children’s learning, and may even slow it down. Second, the objects themselves should draw attention to whichever feature is meant to convey information, for example, the length of a rod if it is meant as an analogy to number. Third, teachers should provide instruction in the use of the manipulative so that this feature is salient to students, but teachers should not be so controlling that students are merely executing instructions without thinking. In addition, students are more likely to understand the concept the manipulative is meant to convey if that parallel is made explicit to them
1 - 2 of 2
Showing 20▼ items per page