Choosing Manipulatives

Once we, as teachers, understand the importance of manipulatives and the cautions we must take in using them, we need to learn how to select the best manipulatives for our classroom and our students. Clements and McMillen (1996) make many suggestions to help teachers when choosing manipulatives:

Select manipulatives primarily for children’s use. Teacher demonstrations with manipulatives can be valuable; however, children themselves should use the manipulatives to solve a variety of problems.

Select manipulatives that allow children to use their informal methods. Manipulatives should not prescribe or unnecessarily limit students' solutions or ways of making sense of mathematical ideas. Students should be in control.

Use caution in selecting "prestructured" manipulatives in which the mathematics is built in by the manufacturer, such as base-ten blocks as opposed to interlocking cubes.

Select manipulatives that can serve many purposes.

Choose particular representations of mathematical ideas with care. Perhaps the most important criteria are that the experience be meaningful to students and that they become actively engaged in thinking about it.

To introduce a topic, use a single manipulative instead of many different manipulatives.

Select computer manipulatives when appropriate. (p. 278).

Also, I feel it is important to select manipulatives which are appropriate for your class. Only you will know how your students learn, what manipulatives will work best for them and how you can introduce and use manipulatives to meet the needs of your many students. Getting to know your students and their needs will help accomplish this.