I feel as if people don't give visual tools enough credit. Today we used many different manipulatives in order to learn different math concepts, and I found them extremely helpful. Although I would be able to do the math without them, they make things much easier and quicker to comprehend. I especially found the coloured shapes useful for fractions. For people who don't yet understand how to do fractions and common denominators, they are extremely easy to use. At first, we didn't even think about the fact that we were finding common denominators, but instead, had fun trying to make the different shapes out of the number of specific shapes we were given. Then, when we had to think of the exercise as a teacher, I realized what the topics we were actually learning were. This made me realize that it would be an excellent way to get students engaged who don't normally like the thought of math. Many students have the potential to do well in math, but just don't see the use in learning it. I feel that if a lesson was started this way, they would be able to practice and get confidence without realizing it, and would hopefully follow the lesson much better afterwards. However, you would definitely need to clean the tiles up afterwards as (just like we discovered), they can be very distracting and too much fun to play with !
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