Touch Math: Manipulatives For Improving Student Achievement In Mathematical Concepts

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Touch Math is supplement(al) math program that emphasizes the use of manipulatives to improve students achievement in mathematical concepts. Janet Bullock first developed the program in 1975. At the time Bullock was an elementary school teacher who noticed many of her students were struggling with math concepts. She realized these students were in need of an intervention to help improve their math skills and boost their confidence in the subject area. According to Nancy Jordan “math interventions are much less common for young learners than reading interventions” (pg. 64). Bullock began to develop Math program based on the research of Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner. Piaget and Bruner believer that concepts are learned in stages, which including: …show more content…

Since bullock published her program in (YEAR) other research has been conducted to see how effective this program is for teaching math to students with exceptionalities. Research shows that the Touch Math Program is not only effective in improving the mastery of computation skills but also in improving the rate in which the students are able to successfully complete these addition skills. ORANGE ARTICLE AUTHOR NAME HERE conducted a study on the effectiveness of the program for improving academic achievement on math addition mad minute timed tests. NAMES gave four students in third and forth grade with different exceptionalities including: “mild mental retardation, learning disabled (??) or health impaired” a pretest consisting of 40 addition problems. The students were given a number line, manipulates, and a touch math number line to use on the pretest only. After (bINSTRUCTION AND TIME) a posttest was given to the students consisting of the same addition problems they were not allowed to use any manipulatives, except touch math. Student one took 5 minutes to complete the pretest and got 85 precent of the problems correct, after touch math instruction student 1 was able to master the test 100 prsent in the same amount of time. Student 2 got a 98 present on the pretest in 10 minutes and a 100 present on the test in 5 minutes. Student 3 got a 100 …show more content…

After the pretest the students would receive direct instruction in Tough Math Monday – Friday twice a day. The study included 3 participants; participant A is an 8-year-old girl with borderline mental capabilities and an IQ score of 73. Her basic addition skill rate increased for 30 percent to 100 percent after 9 teaching sessions of Touch Math. Participant B is an 8-year-old girl with an IQ score of 68, she increases her success rate from 40 percent to 100 percent in 9 teaching sessions. Participant C was an 8-year-old boy with an IQ score of 75, whose addition sill success rate increases form a 30 percent to 100

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