Day+5

__ Day 5— Teaching Strategies - Manipulative Tools __

**__ Would you use manipulatives? Why or why not? Which ones do you like? __**

I would love to use manipulatives, because it will help students solve the problem in a concrete way. And it will open another door for students who have different learning styles, especially the kinaesthetic learners- the learners who learn by doing. I like all of them, because they can be used for different strands and different questions. Although I am not good at every one of them, I guess I can learn by practice.

**Linking cubes** I love this one. It could be easily used for surface area and volume questions, and also it’s a good tool for students to find out how powerful exponents are. It’s also good for them to explore fractions and ratio. I would also like them to build things that they like to practice their geometry and spatial sense, for example: a transformer

**Geoboards** I am not good at this one, but it seems quite interesting. Students should use it to build the sense of surface area and fraction.

**Pattern blocks** Pattern blocks are excellent for fractions and for area questions. It should be quite helpful to build their spatial sense

**Algebra tiles** I love these red and blue tiles which can be used for positive and negative integers with zero principle

**__ One G7/G8 manipulatives activity __**

**Linking** **cubes for exponents**

The teacher can ask students to use base 2 to build exponent for 5 times, say: 2^1, 2^2, 2^3, 2^4, 2^5, using addition to represent multiplication in the middle, for example: 2^2= 2 times 2 cubes, means they need to grab another group of cubes to make it two times of the same thing, which is 4 cubes; 2^3=4^2= 4 times 4 cubes, means they need to grab another 3 groups of cubes to make it four times of the same thing, which is 16 cubes; And so on, so that to let students realize the meaning of exponents and how powerful they are.