Families Ask: Manipulatives in the Middle School

Students of all ages need to do math to understand math. Manipulatives provide a way for students to do mathematics in a concrete manner, and they learn some mathematics concepts better when explored with manipulatives. Middle school teachers sometimes fail to see the purpose of manipulatives, citing reasons such as time constraints and management problems, and generally feel that they are not important. Training students in the appropriate use of manipulatives alleviates many management problems and results in the effective use of time. Learning new concepts in the middle grades is just as complex a task as learning new concepts at grades K–3.