tld Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 Can someone please recommend some manipulatives for teaching various principles regarding fractions for my 5th grader? Also manipulatives for teaching area, perimeter and volume? He can sort of sometimes figure things out, but I don't feel like he's really understanding what he's doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbgrace Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 I used c-rods and Everything's Coming Up Fractions for fraction work. I also googled things that the book itself didn't cover (may have been division of fractions/I can't remember now!) so that I could teach all of fractions with the c-rods. So I am pretty sure you could use Education Unboxed, youtube, and google searches to find ways to cover them with c-rods without the book. I felt the book was worth the cost for us, though. You can use c-rods for area, perimeter and probably volume too. With volume, I think I might have used my 1000 cube, 100, and 1 cm cubes. I know there are specially created manipulatives for liquid volume. There are also videos using those manipulatives. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiara.I Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 Hmmm We use a geoboard for area, and one-inch tiles. And centimetre cubes. For fractions, we've been using a fraction chart that has the fractions in strips, 1-10. That might not be helpful though, it depends on what you're doing with fractions. It's good for basics, but it's not going to teach dividing fractions by each other... Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elastimom Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 If you are looking for something basic, you can get multi-colored plastic tiles or blocks. But you can also use what you have around the house. you can use a thin paper plate (or round coffee filter, strips of paper, etc) and fold/cut and write 1/2,1/4,1/8, and so on. You can also use a box of granola bars (or whatever you may have). If there are 10 bars in the box, each bar is 1/10. You eat 1/10, there are 9/10 left in the box. 10/10 makes a whole which is 1=100% and such. Also, you can use coins to show how fraction works. Just about anything can be a good manipulative in the house :) If you are looking for something more than basic skills, I'd like to suggest Key to Fractions workbooks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomeAgain Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 This is why I keep my MUS Gamma and Epsilon dvds around. They really make it easy. DS is hitting fractions right now. So far he has done basic conversions (like using coins for a visual and a bar system to see the same fraction another way), multiplication/division using the MUS method of overlaying colored film, and common denominators using factor trees. Area & perimeter - the Sir Cumference books explain it well. In our house we took the wording from MUS: "Area is Squarea" to remember to find the squares inside, and perimeter (the long word) is the long walk around. You could probably do just fine getting a set of c-rods and using them to illustrate concepts. Build them up for volume. Look at outside blocks for perimeter. fill in a square for area. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowbeltmom Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 I used the Montessori fraction manipulatives for teaching fractions. I used the square tiles from the Montessori stamp game to teach area. I also purchased a set of the standard 3-D shapes to have on hand when the kids were studying volume and surface area. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoo Keeper Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 (edited) We like c-rods, and also use these fraction blocks from Guest Hollow ( Thanks, Jenn! :) ) Edited October 26, 2017 by Zoo Keeper 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
73349 Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 We used these circles for fractions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
letsplaymath Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 This is a very broad question. Without more specifics, we can only guess at what might help. Manipulatives are not magic. At his level, manipulatives might actually make things more confusing. What he needs to do is learn to apply common sense to the math situations. With the combination of problems you mention and his grade level, I'm guessing that he's reached the limit of how many rote rules he can accurately remember and follow. No matter how much you've tried to teach conceptually, he's probably been trying to get by at a surface level, and now the deeper understanding isn't there to support the new lessons. For fractions, you might try going back and re-learning the basics in a different way. James Tanton has an excellent resource that doesn't talk down to kids but forces them to grapple with understanding the math. Work through it together and make sure your son can explain to you why his answers make sense. Then try going back to your normal curriculum, and I think you'll find it easier with the new foundation. For area, perimeter, and volume: Is he trying to remember a bunch of rules for calculating these? Can he keep track of which word goes with which rule? Can he explain what the words mean in a simple, non-mathy way? Something like, "Area is how much flat space the shape covers. Perimeter is how long a fence we'd need to go all the way around the shape. Volume is how much water we could pour in to fill the shape." Can he explain why we use square units for area but not for perimeter? And why cubed units make sense for volume? Has he done a lot of measuring things in the real world? For instance, find the area of a desk or tabletop in Post-It notes. Explore the puzzles at Estimation 180 and at Would You Rather Math. Many of these deal with measurement concepts. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fralala Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 I used c-rods and Everything's Coming Up Fractions for fraction work. I also googled things that the book itself didn't cover (may have been division of fractions/I can't remember now!) so that I could teach all of fractions with the c-rods. So I am pretty sure you could use Education Unboxed, youtube, and google searches to find ways to cover them with c-rods without the book. I felt the book was worth the cost for us, though. You can use c-rods for area, perimeter and probably volume too. With volume, I think I might have used my 1000 cube, 100, and 1 cm cubes. I know there are specially created manipulatives for liquid volume. There are also videos using those manipulatives. There's another book called From Here to There With Cuisenaire Rods: Area, Perimeter, and Volume that might be helpful to you. I agree that there is a big difference between not having a common sense understanding of these things and freezing up when he tries to do Official Math Problems. Does he understand what you mean if you talk about the perimeter of the room you're in, or the area of the backyard, or which container has the greatest volume? If he had to measure cardboard or wood or string for a project, could he work with fractions? Or cut a recipe in half? Or run a quarter of a mile? I would just try to go for the areas that he already might be familiar with these concepts from his experience rather than treat them like Math Concepts We Must Represent With Math Manipulatives. My final 2 cents on this: stay away from pie- and pizza-type manipulatives and games as much as possible, as I think these lead kids to more misconceptions about fractions (and confusion) than distance- and measurement-type situations. And, if you don't use rods, do be sure to pay attention to making sure your child demonstrates to himself in some way the fact that increasing perimeter does not necessarily mean an increase in area. All you need to play around with this idea is graph paper and a pencil, really, but a geoboard could help, or the rods. This is one of those things that is so much fun to discover on one's own and can otherwise cause misconceptions. (And if you do use a 3-d object like the rods to teach area, it's really important to use them like stamps to clearly convey that this is a 2-d concept.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4KookieKids Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 This isn't a "big" answer to this question, but my oldest recently had fun with the "climb through a piece of paper" challenge, and it might be a fun activity for you. The challenge was to cut a piece of paper (one single 8.5x11) so that it's big enough for a person to climb through. Now, granted, he's skinny enough, that he actually managed to climb through his just be removing most of the inside, so then I made the challenge to make it big enough for ME to climb through. I let him experiment a lot, and meanwhile cut mine like I learned when I was kid (https://blog.doublehelix.csiro.au/climb-through-a-hole-in-a-sheet-of-paper/ shows how). It was fun for him to see and we talked about how, in some sense, we're turning area into perimeter. So instead of discarding the inside area (like he had done), I managed to find a way to convert that inside area into my perimeter, thereby giving me a much larger perimeter than I started out with. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
historically accurate Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 We have these for fractions: https://www.learningresources.com/product/rainbow+fraction--174-+tiles.do Kids also have a fraction overlay sheet that they can compare fractions with but I don't have a clue where it came from. We also have an old school pizza fraction game to play: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11590/pizza-fraction-fun I had one child who had trouble with fractions - I printed off a whole bunch of free worksheets, a few Key To worksheets (I found a couple of the books half-used at a thrift store) and games and she did a page from the "Fraction binder" each day. We just hit it from a few different directions. We played this game a lot for area: https://reliefteachingideas.com/2013/06/27/area-dice-game/ We have these manipulatives for volume & surface area visualization: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0034IX85O/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Some places to look for some extra practice: Teachers Pay Teachers, Khan Academy, Aleks math (may be able to get a free trial), pinterest, library might have a book that covers these topics. Math Mammoth has some pretty inexpensive pdf's on fractions. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momtofive Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 This is why I keep my MUS Gamma and Epsilon dvds around. They really make it easy. I was going to say the same thing! :) I've used a number of different math curricula and aporoaches, and we've found MUS's teaching to be excellent, clear, and SO fun with their fraction overlay set. Clear teaching that sticks! ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotherGoose Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 Saxon math 7/6 and 5/4 have these fraction circle cutouts in the book that we use. I always relate it back to cookies. As for perimeter and area etc, I've found it easiest to do the other with real world problems. For example today we were measuring the tiles in th bathroom floor and talking about it. (Not precisely, did precise math with a fake problem). Or perimeter, talking about an actual real fence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pistachio mom Posted October 29, 2017 Share Posted October 29, 2017 We love fraction tiles, and the unifix type of cubes that are interlocking so to make cubes, not just sticks. https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-Rainbow-Fraction-Tiles/dp/B001604R1G https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0199IISP2/ref=dp_sp_detail?psc=1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Earthmerlin Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 We love fraction tiles, and the unifix type of cubes that are interlocking so to make cubes, not just sticks. https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-Rainbow-Fraction-Tiles/dp/B001604R1G https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0199IISP2/ref=dp_sp_detail?psc=1 Out of curiosity, how exactly do you use those interlocking blocks to teach fractions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aloha2U Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 RightStart Math is having another webinar on fractions. We loved their manipulatives! Fractions are the focus of this week's webinars. Part 2 is on 10/31 @ 1pm ct. http://ow.ly/kP5k30gdTgf #RightStartMath #FractionFun 8:24 AM - 30 Oct 2017 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hypatia. Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Minecraft (creative mode) was helpful for some of my kids in really understanding area and volume. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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