As a staff, we were curious about how our school story can help us engage students with math, and what impact this would have on student learning.  We began discussing this last year at math focused professional development sessions. We learned about using various manipulatives (hands-on resources) in our classrooms and how they could support our students both with learning new concepts and with demonstrating learning. We then met in primary and intermediate teams to make some decisions regarding what mainpulatives would be best to introduce to our students to support student learning. Finally, last spring we used some of our school budget to purchase these items.

 Our teachers have been using these items since last May, and we thought it was time for a check-in.  We asked teachers to reflect on their usage of the manipulatives and to describe the impact these manipulatives have had in their classrooms.  Here is what we found out:

 Our primary students use manipulatives like dice, cards, plastic counters and unifix cubes daily. Other items, like 3d solids and shapes, numicons and 10 frames are used at different times throughout the year for specific units of study.  Here is what our teachers said about some of the materials that we purchased:

• Dice and cards are a must have. They are used to put concepts into practice through play. Dice and cards help students solidify basic math facts such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and allow students to demonstrate learning in a fun way. 
• Unifix cubes help students demonstrate composition and decomposition examples in both a visual and tactile way.  They are used for measurement, estimation, building, motor skills, patterning, and play. Our students often explore math concepts (ie. borrowing, remainders,) and can demonstrate their learning in a hands-on way.  
• Pattern blocks are helpful with creating pictures, patterning and play. They help our students explore and visualize patterns which provides a solid base for more complex patterns down the road.   

 Our intermediate teachers are using manipulatives such as fraction circles, pattern blocks, cuisinaire rods and individual white boards to encourage students to explore, visualize and demonstrate learning in a variety of ways.  They say that:

• Fraction circles allow students to create and manipulate fractions so they can see that fractions are a part of a whole.
• Pattern blocks are used to encourage students to explore and allow students to represent patterns in a visual way. Some students choose to use pattern blocks independently to support their classwork as they build patterns and begin to learn more complex algebra concepts
• Cuisinaire rods support learning fractions, borrowing and re-grouping and concepts related to base 10. They encourage students to play and some students choose them independently as they can be helpful as students work through challenging problems.
• Individual white boards are great when solving problems with a partner or when working with a small group. They provide opportunities for students to show thinking and they are great for group discussions and brainstorming. Some students are more willing to commit an answer on a white board as opposed to a piece of paper. 

 Impact on learning: Our curriculum asks students to not only learn a concept, but to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways. Math manipulatives provide all students with an entry point into the curriculum, and provide different ways for students to demonstrate their learning. We know that all learners are different, and by providing different ways to access their learning, including teaching a concept and demonstrating learning, more of our students can find success.  Our teachers are seeing this success at all levels through student engagement, willingness to explore and play with manipulatives and by students independently choosing to use manipulatives to help with their learning. Students are commenting in self reflections that they like to use manipulatives to "get better at doing addition," and that they can use maniupatives to solidify their learning.  

We are curious to see if this will play a role in achievement throughout the year.  We will come back to this question in the spring!