Reply To: Lesson 3-3: Discussion Prompt

[Jonathan Lind]

I also have trouble imagining a place for manipulatives in my higher level high school classes. I teach geometry, too, and have found some areas where manipulatives can be helpful: talking about angle side relationships in triangles, it helps to have a few rulers or even different lengths of sticks around to test out relationships; actually moving shapes around to explore congruence and transformations; and like Kerri said 3D models for volume and surface area. It’s pretty tricky as the math gets more abstract, though, and I’ve found that most students who might gravitate towards using manipulatives will end up drawing a representation of those anyway, which is a pretty good problem solving strategy at the higher levels in itself.

[Jonathan Lind]

I also have trouble imagining a place for manipulatives in my higher level high school classes. I teach geometry, too, and have found some areas where manipulatives can be helpful: talking about angle side relationships in triangles, it helps to have a few rulers or even different lengths of sticks around to test out relationships; actually moving shapes around to explore congruence and transformations; and like Kerri said 3D models for volume and surface area. It’s pretty tricky as the math gets more abstract, though, and I’ve found that most students who might gravitate towards using manipulatives will end up drawing a representation of those anyway, which is a pretty good problem solving strategy at the higher levels in itself.