My students need hands-on math materials, specifically 9 types of AllStar Die in various shapes, to teach them skills about three dimensional shapes and patterns.
When am I ever going to use the math in this class? Hands-on manipulatives that teach math skills help students relate to the real world and thus we have better educated and highly motivated students. Nets are a way to build 2-dimensional plans into 3-dimensional shapes.
My students live in a economically disadvantaged area.
Many of them think it is not possible for them to attend college. Math is a stepping stone for getting accepted into college. Many of them are first generation college bound students and don't even know how to fill out the college applications. Math can be a road block to their aspirations and hands-on materials help more students be successful.
My Project
Our school owns two Ellison Die Cut machines. However, we do not have any math related dies except numbers. At a conference, I learned about the nets that can be created with the die machine. These nets are cut out of card stock paper and then all the perforations are already there for students to quickly and easily assemble the 3-dimensional shape. For example, a flat 2-d shape can be folded into either a cube, cylinder, cone, or even pyramid. There are other math dies available too such as tangrams and pattern blocks. With these shapes I can cut out of paper all the manipulatives needed to teach sequences and their equations by using a pattern.
With budget cuts in our state, I am finding it harder to create good manipulatives in the high school math classroom.
These dies will allow me to only need to buy card stock paper and my students will all have their own sets of manipulatives.
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