Manipulatives Are Beneficial To Student Learning

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The final way that manipulatives are beneficial to student learning is that they help students to communicate their understanding of concepts in an easy to understand and universal way. Manipulatives help students to “communicate their mathematical thinking”, even when words evade them (p. 78 NCTM). Sometimes students struggle to put their mathematical thinking into words, but with the use of manipulatives they can show their thinking and working through the manipulatives can help them to verbalize their thinking. Manipulatives help to break down concepts into their most simplistic forms, which allows the students to gain the fundamentals they need in that area of learning in order to succeed and be able to explain more complex concepts later