Manipulatives in Middle School

Have you ever had one of those days where you actually want your administrator to come in and do a walk through? I had one of those days today. We had a hands on lesson for adding and subtracting integers and it went really well. 

First, with our new textbook, we have some amazing resources available to us. We need time to explore them and use them to their full potential. For now, baby steps...

They have a feature for hands on labs. We can "launch the lesson" and a completed PowerPoint is ready for us to use.

This one is about 9 slides long.

Students used the counters to follow along with the lesson. 

We made a card to go along with it because I have not taught them the "rules". 

This is an introduction 

We made an envelope and small cards to show what we had done with the counters. You know, I was going to include a foldable for our math notebooks.

I didn't have a foldable ready for the vocabulary, but we just took some quick notes. 

I will fix that for next time! 

Students were making the connections about zero pairs, and adding when you subtract integers, and all that great stuff that we want them to do when we teach. The visual was so awesome. I just wish I had more time in my class so we didn't have to wait until Monday to make the connections to the equations. 

I am keeping my fingers crossed that Monday when we return and start looking at "rules" and stuff, they will remember. I plan to keep the manipulatives out so they can practice. Our standard actually is for students to use concrete models, so I plan to keep them out as much as possible. I want them to internalize so they can have a deeper understanding when they go to 7th and 8th.

I am linking up with Joanne for Sparking Motivation, because seriously, give 11 year olds any manipulative and you have them motivated, even if its to do things with them we don't them to! 

And with Jennifer for interactivty because this was definitely a lesson with some interaction going on!!! Check out her new site!