Why I Create My Own Fraction Manipulatives

$Make your own fraction manipulatives$

If you had told me a year ago that ‘teaching’ fractions would be fun and that I had no need for expensive manipulatives, I would have certainly smile and though that you were on some sort of strong medication that inhibited you to think clearly (seriously). Because, in other words, you would be telling me that I had had it all wrong…and that what we ‘knew’ about fractions was incorrect (insert a very long what? here). Yet, today I am writing about how I NO longer use store bought manipulatives for teaching fractions – none, zero, nada…absolutamente NADA prehecho.

This decision was the product of much reading, discussing with my teammates, and more reading. I strongly, and I mean strongly recommend the book Extending Children’s Mathematics : Fractions and Decimals by Empson and Levi. Reading this book has been truly enlightening as it clarified and explained so many questions I did not even know I had about how children learn fractions. In addition, I attended a 3 day professional development course on Fractions alone. You can read about it here. But do not take it from me, here is what the books says about:

“The use of fraction manipulatives to teach equivalence and order is popular. However, students can use manipulatives such as fraction bars or divided circles to solve fraction problems without understanding the mathematical basis for the relationship. […] Rather than supporting children to think, these types of manipulatives can eliminate the need for children to think mathematically.”

I had to experience this first hand to both believe and understand – and WHAT a difference it has made. Teaching fractions has been the best unit (and my favorite) this year so far. I witnessed children making amazing connections and really ‘thinking mathematically’ while making tons of conjunctures at the same time. If a child needed to make sense of a problem involving equal sharing, they were free to use color pencils or pre-cut pieces of paper in the shape of a square or circle.

$Student using colors to represent fractions$

A student using color pencils to distribute equal shares

“Children need only a few simple tools to solve problems involving fractions. These tools include paper and pencil for drawing o notating, cutout pieces of paper for folding or cutting, colored pencils or markers for allocating shares, and linking cubes for representing discrete quantities such as people or candy bars in a problem. These tools allow students to work with fractional quantities in a manner that reflects and reinforces their understanding of fraction relationships.”

By letting students work with simple tools, I was able to see how my students were thinking about fractions (which is absent when they use structured pieces).

I am working on a detailed post of how we taught fractions this year, including the materials/resources we used to guide our instruction. And of course, a few tips and highlights from working and learning first hand from Megan Franke.