Week 3 - Math Manipulatives

In class this week we worked with multiple manipulatives that can be used to explore different concepts in mathematics. When I was in high school we did not use math manipulatives often, even though it is in the curriculum. In my opinion that is because it is often assumed that the students in academic courses are more capable of understanding the concepts without the need of seeing it visually represented in front of them. I believe that manipulatives should be incorporated in every math course, for all levels of learning. This way the concepts are able to make sense in a concrete sense, as well as in an abstract sense.

When I have a math class I will try to use manipulatives whenever it would work in the lessons because they help us to have a better understanding of the math behind what is being learned. In class this week I was able to understand better the math behind the equation n*(n+1)/2 as the equation for the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + … + n. Before this class I knew that the equation and the sum meant the same thing, but I did not fully understand why until I used the snap cubes to find out that by doubling the amount of blocks I had made a rectangle with dimensions n x (n+1), which is how we arrived at the previous equation. The snap cubes helped me to see the abstract equation in a concrete way so that 

I was able to better understand why the equation is equal to the sum.

Manipulatives can help any math student to have a better understanding of what they are learning and that is why I believe they should be used as often as possible.