Learning with Parents were excited to host another webinar with Grace Coker from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). We discussed how manipulatives can be a really powerful tool to support maths learning at school and at home. Manipulatives are recommended by EEF in the guidance reports for all stages – Early Years and Key Stages 1,2 and 3.
“A manipulative is an object that children or practitioners can interact with and move to represent mathematical ideas.”
Manipulatives in the classroom
Grace explained the many benefits of manipulatives. They can:
- Support flexibility and fluency
- Provide a talking tool
- Support problem solving
- Reveal misconceptions
- Provide meaningful contexts
She also discussed – and dispelled – the myths that can deter teachers from getting manipulatives out. Namely, that they are only for younger children, are distracting and create issues with behaviour, that simply having them available is enough, that they are only useful for calculating correct answers and that math representations replace them. Grace has also busted all of these myths in a blog. As with all resources, it is how manipulatives are used that matters.
There is lots more discussion of the use of manipulatives in the classroom in this podcast: Why manipulatives matter in the maths classroom | Evidence into Action
(Particularly from 9min 22 – 10min 42)
Manipulatives at home
Our Curriculum Lead, Dr Paula Fieldhouse, then discussed how practical resources can be just as useful in supporting maths at home. Manipulatives will, of course, look different at home and families will need ideas and support – but they can transform children’s experience of maths homework. Of course, very few families have Dienes blocks or Numicon to hand. Some families will have more than others at home, but manipulatives can be literally anything. Counters can be pasta, or dried beans, lego bricks or coins. Tens and ones can be pens and their lids, or spaghetti and pasta, or chocolate fingers and raisins! There are also many mathematical items lurking in cupboards in the shape of tape measures, jugs or scales. From our experience, any activity involving measuring leads to great engagement, general hilarity and much mathematical problem solving – more than one child has tried to measure the dog.
There are many advantages to encouraging families to use resources at home to support children’s learning in maths:
- Talk – at Learning with Parents we believe homework is something to do together, and manipulatives give everyone something to talk about
- Play – manipulatives lend themselves to games with all the benefits they bring
- Reduce anxiety – a playful, practical approach can be less intimidating for parents – 1 in 6 of whom are likely to be anxious about maths
- Exploration – using everyday items for maths can help children connect their classroom learning with the world around them
- Building habits – using everyday items for maths can help families to notice the maths all around them. Also, knowing that you can use whatever you have to hand to support your thinking, or help you visualise a problem, is a great strategy for future learning
Top tips for using manipulatives at home
Paula and Grace emphasized that it was how manipulatives were used that mattered most. Given the levels of anxiety about maths that many people feel, and how little time many families have, it is important that instructions are easy to follow. It is also important that recording the learning does not overshadow the learning itself.
Our top tips for teachers when suggesting activities for families are:
- Give instructions in short sentences
- Explain how this will help children’s learning – in one sentence
- Use an image with household resources
- Be clear about the adult’s role
- Be clear about the feedback you expect – this could be as simple as a note in a homework book to say how it went
- Put generic suggestions, such as ideas for counters, in a homework book at the beginning of the year
