THINKING BLOCKS

Thinking Blocks

Picture courtesy of: http://www.ct4me.net/images/ThinkingBlocks.gif

The Thinking Blocks manipulatives were fun and educational at the same time. With using these manipulatives you could use them as a way to gauge where your students are with comprehension on each section. I probably wouldn’t use it to gauge where students are at comprehensively, but I would use them as a tool that students could use after they had learned the concept.

I feel that if used as a tool and not as a main way to teach the lesson the Thinking Blocks could be helpful for students. I would maybe make this one of the stations during a math lesson and have other stations that student’s would rotate through. I feel that this way I could have different techniques that the students can go through. Some students work best with manipulatives right in their hands and others work better when they work with their peers and some would better their understanding through the website manipulatives.

I’d probably introduce this into a first grade classroom and continue through the second and third grade. Kids today would not have a problem with the technology. All the students would need to be taught how to use the website, so this would be important step to cover first. I would model the website to students as a whole before I would send them of to do on their own. I would make sure that I had charts and 100 tables, as the first graders are still working on numbers. I guess I would see how they did with it, if they struggled I would hold off till second grade.