Math Manipulatives

After getting bogged down in teaching standards and worrying about covering tested materials, I sometimes forget that math can be fun....and I like math.  I can imagine that as teachers, the way we feel about math really affects the way our students will feel about math.  If we project the image that teaching math is stressful, we project that stress on to our students.  When we were using the miras in class on Monday, many of us were having so much fun, we forgot we were doing math.  It was interesting to learn that many teachers don't take advantage of the manipulatives available to them at their schools. This seems strange considering how helpful they can be in getting students to move their thinking from concrete to abstract.  Also of interest to me was the fact that today's students don't differentiate greatly between virtual and tangible manipulatives.  This fact increase teacher access to many different ways to help students learn.

In terms of classroom application, I'm encouraged to have the access of so many materials online, even if I end up in a school or district that does not place much emphasis on learning with manipulatives.  It was encouraging as well to see that teachers who had your students in later years, could pick out which students were yours because they had a much deeper grasp of math concepts.