This past week in math we worked with manipulitives. We used beans to show how you could show students negative numbers. As a student in elementary/middle school I can remember being taught "2 negatives make a positive" you never knew why that was just how it was. Working with the beans was a clear example of the WHY portion, which I think is crucial for students to understand and get the full potential out of math. Along with learning tools for negative numbers we worked with algebra tiles to help break down factoring.
These tiles had a different color on each side, we used the colors to distinguish between negative and positive numbers. I had a more difficult time working with the tiles. I am so used to the way I was taught factoring during school that to do it a different way was pretty confusing. If we know that students all learn in different ways, how are we suppose to teach all the different ways in math? Throughout the day we were shown various ways to teach the same thing, some instantly "clicked" with me while others had me feeling lost. If, as teachers we find a way to teach a variety of these techniques, and not just the ones we ourselves are comfortable with, we will have more successful students.
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