Manipulatives Can Still Be Used In A Virtual Classroom.

 

Teachers often use manipulatives in class to help students move from concrete to abstract or vice versa but with many school districts moving to a virtual classroom, one has to have virtual manipulatives to use in class. Fortunately, there are quite a few sites out there that are available and many of them are free.

My experience is that some sites do not work as well with iPads because they require flash but others work well.  I'll let you know which ones seem to work on mac's and iPads so you'll know ahead of time.

Didax has a page of virtual manipulatives including algebra tiles that work on the Mac and iPad.  The nice thing about the algebra tiles aside from adding or subtraction, multiplying or dividing is that they can be used to show binomial multiplication and trinomial factoring.  It offers so many possibilities.  In addition, there are fraction strips with a number line, two color counters for basic math and other possibilities.

Math Playground has quite a few virtual manipulatives including a geoboard complete with rubber bands and a choice of grid lines or no gridlines for students to work on area, perimeter, or transformation.  It's a good way to visualize an open ended question like what are the measurements of a rectangle with an area of 32 square units.  In addition, there are apps designed for ratios, fractions, decimals, and measuring angles.  A few of their virtual manipulatives require flash but most don't so you can use them on your iPad or Mac.

I have an activity I use in Geometry which uses tangrams to create certain shapes based on specific pieces.  Some shapes are concave while others are convex and this site has tangrams one can use in whatever activity you want rather than requiring people to try to reproduce a specific picture.  This also allows a person to use pieces of the tangram to work on transformations, or rotations.  This is nice and works on Macs. 

The National Council of Mathematics has some nice virtual manipulatives in Illuminations. Their Algebra Tiles manipulative allows students to solve simple equations, substitute values into equations, practice binomial multiplication and factoring trinomials or binomials.  This one includes instructions for using the virtual manipulatives where other Algebra Tiles ones do not.

Hooda Math has a nice algebra balance activity which allows students to solve problems step by step once they've set the balance up with the original equation.  This set of virtual manipulatives allow students to set up the equation they want to solve or they can use one the program selects but it does not do anything more than a simple equation with a variable on both sides.  They also offer students the chance to work with Algebra Tiles which is actually a nice one to work with as it allows y^2 and a few other choices I've not seen before.

Although the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives (NLVM) is still out there and has so many manipulatives, I've never had it work on a Mac or iPad due to the language it is written in. I've never been able to download the app they offer but I have had it work on a windows based machine so it might work on chrome books.  This site, if you can get access to it has some great manipulatives that cannot be found anywhere else.

I hope these help with teaching during the pandemic.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.