Jackie Cooke’s K-5 Math Blog

In my last blog entry, I talked about a common problem teachers are faced with when using math manipulatives — the issue of stealing.  This time I want to talk a little more about another common issue that confronts teachers when trying to incorporate a variety of math manipulatives as part of their instruction.  I often am asked a variation on the following question:

“How  can I better organize all these math manipulatives? I’m tired of finding plastic coins all over the floor at the end of a lesson on money.”

Ultimately, you will have to find the best answer that works for you, but I thought I’d share a couple ideas on this topic. Teachers I know utilize three different strategies for how to disburse manipulatives to use in classroom lessons. Some teachers pass out kits where they give each student a gallon bag containing a variety of the most often used math manipulatives. Other teachers organize table group buckets or baskets and have table group representatives come up and get the supplies for their group at the start of a lesson. The third strategy is to keep each type of manipulative in its own container. I’ve seen containers like plastic dishpans, baskets, or boxes as examples of storage containers.  Again, the teacher asks students to come up a few at a time to help themselves to the number of manipulatives needed per person or for partner  or small group work.

Teachers have shared lots of different strategies for helping to return manipulatives that have fallen on the floor to the place they belong. If the manipulatives are sorted and handed out by shape or color it is that much easier to return a lost manipulative to its proper home. Teachers use “sharpies” to number or letter manipulatives or place small stickers on them as a way to help in the sorting process. When a particular kind of manipulative has a large variety of small pieces, I like to sort them into the kinds of drawer systems found at hardward stores. (You know, the kind used for housing nails, screws, nuts, bolts, etc.) Every year I have a few students who love to help with sorting these math materials. They are often even willing to give up a recess to fill “student orders” for manipulatives.

Here’s a fun variation of this idea used for money manipulatives. Turn one of these drawer sets into the class bank. Identify a few students to be the bankers. They can even wear green eyeshades (cut out from old baseball caps) as they assume their Banker role.

Teacher to Teacher’s Making Sense of Problem Solving Books A and B include information about managing manipulatives, too. Click on the following file: A_Note_About_the_Use_of_Manipulatives to read the excerpt from these books.

What strategies have you come up with to help organize all those math manipulatives? We’d love to hear your comments.

1/30/09

I was working with a group of teachers the other day. We had just completed a workshop that had focused on looking at the elements of a quality problem solving environment. As part of our agenda, teachers reflected on the use of manipulatives for deepening student understanding and communication of their thinking around math concepts presented in problem solving tasks. Veronica, a second grade teacher, in a suburban school outside of Portland, OR came up to me after the workshop and said, ” The biggest challenge I have around the use of manipulatives, is student theft. I don’t even want to use white boards anymore because I keep having to replace the dry erase markers. And I have about half the pattern block I started out with. How do you deal with this issue in your classroom?” I explained to Veronica that I use storytelling a lot in my classroom to help with a variety of different issues, stealing being one of them. (As a matter of fact, I have written a book that contains a whole collection of these types of stories.)

Here’s how it works. First, I introduce the topic of stealing by telling my whole class the story called “Finders Keepers.” Next, I get them to discuss and write a reflective response in their creative writing journals. We have a process in my classroom for students who would like to share what they have written, where they put a star at the top of the entry. The next day anyone who puts the star at the top will get to take the author’s chair and share what they have written. The clas, as the audience, gives the student writer feedback in the form of “Stars” and “Wishes”. They have to give 3 stars for every wish. “Stars” are things they like about the student’s writing and “Wishes” are things they wish the person would have included in their journal entry. I also give a “Star” and a “Wish” to each student author.  Sometimes I will approach a student and request that he or she allow me to share their story if I think there is something in it that would be beneficial to the class as a whole.

Finally, if I know that a particular student is responsible for a theft, I pull that student aside and talk to him or her about having a chance to earn whatever item it is that he or she wants so desperately. In my 28 years, I’ve had only a few children request that they be allowed to earn something like this and have actually had very little theft. Just calling students’ attention to the fact that it is normal to want items that belongs to someone else, hearing about how I myself struggled with that issue as a child, and helping students to see that they harm the whole class both now and into the future if they aren’t respectful of classroom property seems to be enough to have made this a non-issue throughout my years of teaching.

If you have any other ideas of ways to help children with this issue of stealing or just want to comment on something I’ve written here, I’d love to hear from you.