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**Manipulatives & Activities**

Are your students having trouble visualizing the math problems you give them? Geoboards can be useful for so many topics. For example, if you are giving word problems related to area and perimeter hand the students a geoboard too. They can create the shape given in your word problem using rubber bands. Make sure they understand that the space between two pegs can be one inch or one foot etc., depending on the word problem. You should give your students time to experiment with the geoboards before you ask them to use it for their homework. Do example problems during classtime with your students and allow them to try the geoboards out. If you have a Smart Board in your classroom, you can pull up a geoboard and have your students complete the problem there.

Circular geoboards can be used to illustrate angles and degrees. Rectangular geoboards with x and y coordinates may also be helpful.



Working on probability? There are several different manipulatives to make this concept less abstract. You can try coin tossing, die rolling, or spinners. The way I would work this activity is to give the students example problems either on a worksheet or overhead. Ask the students to get into pairs or groups. Depending on the example problem, they would choose a manipulative to complete it. You could also create centers on probability. Each center could be devoted to a manipulative and have separate probability problems.