Aly Monson Math Methods

  Using manipulatives in elementary mathematics is extremely important for students to gain a conceptual understanding of a variety of mathematical topics. It can be difficult for teachers to determine if students can transfer their understanding from manipulatives to other situations but this is why teachers need to plan time to have students learn the concepts with the manipulatives and then give the students time to solve the problems and only use manipulatives to check their work before finally removing the manipulatives and assessing the student’s knowledge because they won’t usually have these manipulatives in higher grades and outside of the classroom. In order to assess this growth and understanding, teacher observation and questioning are crucial. Teachers need to walk around the classroom or pull individual students or small groups and have students demonstrate their thinking with and without manipulatives. Manipulatives are also great because they help students improve t...

  During this class, we learned about the five types of purposeful questions. The first type is gathering information, which teachers use when want students to recall basic facts or definitions (mostly things that are memorization). This is a question used to assess students because it usually has a right and wrong answer and can help the teacher gauge whether or not the student understands. The second type of purposeful question is probing thinking, which is used when teachers want students to explain, elaborate, or clarify their thinking and reasoning and why they came up with that answer. The third type of purposeful question is making mathematics visible which teachers use when they want students to make connections between mathematical concepts or ideas. This question allows students to connect the topic to other topics they have already learned which expands their knowledge and helps them make connections. The fourth type of purposeful questioning is encouraging reflection an...