Manipulative and Teaching Tool List

Two-sided Counters: sold in sets of 1000 through Spectrum (product # 92026). 1 set will be plenty for your school.  2 if you are a large school (250+ students).

Transparent Bingo Chips: sold in sets of 1000 though Amazon.  Great for games and modelling multiplication.  2 sets would give you a good-sized class set.

Base 10 Blocks: Expensive, but necessary. Learning Resources has sets of 600 pieces (including 200 rods, 20 flats and 3 thousand cubes).  If you don’t have any, you’ll need at least 4 sets.  If you would prefer a set of base 10 blocks that interlock to create solids, then we recommend this set from Scholar’s Choice.

Multi-link “Snap” cubes: these ones on Learning Resources are easy to put together and take apart. Highly recommended.

Colour Tiles:  sold in sets of 400 through Learning Resources. 2 sets would be ideal.  This would provide a class of 28 students enough to share in order to model multiplication.

Dominos: great for counting and for modelling addition and multiplication.  You have 2 options: sets up to 12 dots and sets up to 18 dots. I recommend purchasing 4 sets of the 12-dot dominos for your school through Spectrum (product #14638).  The 18-dot dominos are more appropriate for intermediate only (product #83208).

Pattern Blocks: Spectrum (#94377)has the best price by far.  250 pattern blocks for $15.95. Recommended to buy 3 sets to build an appropriate class set.

Plastic coins: an essential for skip counting, financial literacy and decimal place value.  We recommend purchasing 2 of these Canadian coin sets from Spectrum (product # 10710).

Cuisenaire Rods: you will need to purchase 2 sets of six for your school.  The wooden ones are expensive, but will last forever.  Here are the cheapest ones I have found so far.  The plastic ones are less expensive, but not as durable.  Here is a set through Amazon.

Decahedra Dice (10-sided dice, 0-9): Sold in sets of 6 through Spectrum or 1 at a time through Box Cars and One-Eyed Jacks. Recommended to purchase at least 5 sets if going with spectrum or 30 dice if going through Box Cars.

Icosahedra Dice (20-sided dice, 1-20): Sold in sets of 6 through Spectrum. Recommended to purchase at least 5 sets.

Decahedra Dice (10-sided tens, hundreds and thousands): These are amazing for place value and partial sums/products practice. Single dice sold through Box Cars and One-Eyed Jacks for $0.50 each.

Cube Dice (6-sided, dot configuration): Commonly sold everywhere. Create a set of 30 dice.

Magnetic Teaching Tools:

  • Ten frames: A welcome edition to the primary classroom!  Ten frames are essential for demonstrating strategies for making ten and beyond. These ones from Learning Resources are wonderful for whole class demonstration and individual station use.
  • Cuisenaire rods: Buy two sets for yourself!  There aren’t quite enough to model common denominators.  These ones from Spectrum (product # 91450) are the cheapest we have found at this point.

Straws and Connectors (Roylco): For modelling large numbers (from thousands to millions) in intermediate.  Recommended to purchase 3 sets of 705.  Or: ask your primary teachers to borrow their sets for a time. Sold on Amazon.ca or from your local toy store.

Group Point Math

This is an excellent, sneaky math/management routine for grades 1-5.

Do you have plastic coins in your school?  Scoop them and use them for group points.  If not (or if you are too polite to grab all the plastic money for yourself), you can print out some paper coins here:paper money-1l11qpf. Doesn’t look right?  Try this pdf: paper money-17q12br

Why? It is a great way to get students to practice recognizing, combining, trading and dividing money.

How? Do you have your students arranged in groups?  Many do.  Often there are some basic, chore-like tasks that you would like students in each group to accomplish, correct?  Stacking chairs, tidying surfaces, tucking in chairs, cleaning under your desk (etc)?  Instead of assigning basic points for jobs done, give them money. Put a container in the centre of each group and plunk some in every time they complete a job.  If your students are younger, start with pennies.  Group them with ten frames and trade them for dimes!  As students get older, use can start using nickels, quarters, loonies and twoonies.

How often? Let students collect money every day.  At the end of the week, get them to give you a total of the groups earnings.  Trade earnings for rewards!  For older students (grades 3 and up), I like them to split the money evenly between group members.  They can then save the money (making banks for savings is fun, by the way) or spend the money.  Rewards don’t have to cost money, by the way.  How about a gum-chewing ticket?  Or a listen-to-music ticket?  Or a break ticket?  Or a ticket to use a special seat?  Or a sit with a friend ticket?

 

Developing Effective Practice Routines

Giving students enough practice with concepts is tricky.  The right amount of practice will ensure that students have a new, useful tool that they can confidently put to good use in meaningful contexts.  Not enough and they won’t remember it (and therefore they can’t use tool when they need it).  Too much and they’ll be bored.  Plus, it can be tough allotting enough class time to needed practice when there is so much to teach!

So what to do?

The following links provide possibilities for targeted practice in meaningful, timely and focused ways:

Daily Check-In 

Games

Practice Websites

Group Point Math

Paper Practice Resources

 

 

Resources for Estimation

Estimation Big Ideas Document (compiled with the help of the staff from Aspenwood Elementary):

Estimation 180: Estimation is at the heart of this visual site. Students learn to make reasonable estimates through observation and reasoning.  Ideas such as referent and range are featured.

Three Act Tasks:  Students continue many of the same important concepts learned through engaging with Estimation 180 images, but this time they get to watch videos in a three-act sequence that starts with estimating and ends with solving.

Estimation Clipboard: Created by teacher Steve Wyborney, estimation clip board provides another structured, visual estimation task.

Esti-mysteries: I’ve witnessed kids cheering when they get to puzzle out another esti-mystery!  Another creative contribution by teacher Steve Wyborney.

Connections to Literature: Each book title is a link to book reviews and suggested activities!

Great Estimations by Bruce Goldstone

Greater Estimations by Bruce Goldstone

How Much is a Million by David M. Shwartz

Want to know more about estimation?  Read about it here.

 

Excellent Math Websites

Centre for Innovation in Mathematics: Just getting into this one.  UK-based. Free, well-researched resources for math practice and instruction.

Estimation180: again, another wonderful, visual site. Students make reasonable estimates, using “probably too high” or “probably too low” goal posts.  They can submit their estimates and their reasoning.  Also:  look at the clothesline activities.  Free printable clothesline numbers such as integers, fractions, and expressions.

Fraction Talks: a variation on number talks.  Bring up an image, choose a section of the image and ask…what fraction is shaded? Can extend this by challenging students to shade in sections of images (Can you shade exactly 1/4?)

Graphing Stories: again, another visual one.  You are given a basic handout (grid) and asked to graph the video stories provided.

Greg Tang Math Free Downloadable Resources: Greg Tang is the author of math books such as The Grapes of Math.  His website is loaded with free, high-quality printable resources from early primary to middle school. For middle, I particularly like his kakooma integer puzzles.  For primary, he has created loads of practice resources that encourage students to use their knowledge of making ten.  Scroll down and look for Free Resources.

Math Antics: This is currently under review, although has been popular with some of our middle school teachers because of the clear videos and exercises.  Part of the resource is subscription-based and it is hard to tell whether or not the exercise and practice materials go deep enough to be worth the $20 investment.

nrich maths:  An amazing resource with a ton of rich problems for your students to solve.  Very searchable.  Plus, many thoughtful articles.  This is a Cambridge University site.

Numberphile: A new discovery!  Well produced videos to provoke mathematical thinking and inquiry?  Great for young mathematicians in middle school and high school!

Open Middle: Select your grade and your topic.  Interesting challenges and puzzles in a visual framework appear.  An excellent “when you are finished” routine.

Problem of the Week: This is a University of Waterloo site. It features challenging, interesting problems for grades 3 to 12.  Only issue: these problems are very wordy and therefore might not be accessible for all students.

Tangram Channel: I was looking for a good set of extension activities with tangrams and came across this website.  The easy level (which are not so easy) are all free!  You could purchase the more challenging levels, but there are a lot of easy-level puzzles that could keep your kids busy for a good long while.

Three Act Tasks: Not a pretty site, but don’t be fooled.  These are so much fun!  This is a link to a spreadsheet with all kinds of interesting estimation and reasoning tasks using videos and images. Here are other links I have found for 3-act tasks:

Graham Fletcher 3-Act Tasks

Tap into Teen Minds

Starter of the Day: An interactive calendar with interesting warm-up activities for middle years kids. I didn’t really like the look of the home page with its ads, but the daily warm-up activities were really engaging.

Splat Math: Estimating, subitizing, part-whole relationships and even algebra!  This is a tidy, visual, easy-to-use resource to build into your math routines.

Visual Patterns: so great for giving kids lots of practice generating equations with variables.  Also great for inspiring kids to create their own patterns.

Which One Doesn’t Belong: Inspires lively mathematical discussion and debate using mathematical reasoning.  Ready to use images make for a great mathematical routine.

Would You Rather Math: Filled with interesting choices for kids to explore and justify mathematically.  Perfect for grades 3-8.  There are links for K-2 and 9-12, but they are repeats of the options provided for kids at the middle years.  Not a ton of options, but the ones available are excellent.

You Cubed: This is Stanford University professor Jo Boaler ‘s website (of Mathmatical Mindsets fame). This is a very comprehensive website, offering research, professional development and resources. I decided to focus on the tasks with the link above.  These tasks are accessible, visual and challenging.

Number Sense

12 Ways to get to 11 by Eve Merriam

1 Cookie, 2 Chairs, 3 Pears: Numbers Everywhere by Jane Bracket

Ten Little Ladybugs by M. Gerth

Chicka-Chicka 1, 2, 3 by Bill Martin and Michael Sampson

City By Numbers by Stephen Johnson

Counting Crocodiles by Judy Sierra

Counting on Fall by Lizann Flatt

Equal Shmequal by Virginia Kroll

Fish Eyes by Lois Ehlert

Lifetime: The Amazing Numbers in Animal Lives by Lola Schaefer and  Christopher Sila

My Little Sister Ate One Hare by Bill Grossman

One is a Snail, 10 is a Crab by April Sayre

Teeth, Tentacles, and Tails by Christopher Wormell

Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews

The Grapes of Math by Greg Tang

The Cookie Fiasco by Dan Santat

What in the World? Numbers in Nature by Nancy Raines Day

Intermediate:

If the World Were a Village by David J. Smith

This Child, Every Child by David J. Smith

One Well: The Story of Water on Earth by Rochelle Strauss

Animals by the Numbers by Steve Jenkins

How Much is a Million? by David M. Shwartz

Skip to toolbar