Hi Michelle,
No worries about sending me an email – hope I can help out – but please remember that what I
am giving here are only opinions.
Not too sure if it’s a myth or not but there is a supposed fact floating around that MAB was
actually produced for kids in years 3 to 6 to help them get their head around decimals. The block
(thousand) was actually supposed to be regarded as a 1. Which made the flats – tenths, longs –
hundredths and minis- thousandths. Nice story! I can tell you that MAB works really well for
decimals IF the kids are not brought up with it from prep – saved until grade 3/4 – it’s great gear
for decimals.
I’m not too fussed with it being introduced from early years – it’s just a resource alongside many
others. Its worth lies with its relationship to place value. Kids can show 54 or 135 or 769 or
1543 with it. It can help show how renaming looks with subtraction/addition. It’s a good
resource. And so is bundling and rubber bands, tens frames, popsticks (bundling) and rubber
bands AND money – which has (gold coins and notes) – 1s, 2s, 5s 10s, 50s and 100s – giving it
even more flexibility and options than MAB.
When a prep understands that a $5 note is one thing but has the value of 5 – that is
developmentally very big – and I see it regularly.
Numicon (from Oxford Press) is also great material to introduce in prep – expensive but really
effective.
I don’t know about kids getting confused – it’s normally teachers overthinking it and confusing
themselves – get out of the kids road and they can get their heads around most things – sometimes
with a little guidance from you and often with none at all.
I would agree with the staff who are finding that waiting until a certain grade may be
unnecessary and that there shouldn’t be an arbitrary time/age/grade placed on this equipment."
I did a place value activity today that probably sums up how I feel about MAB/materials in the
lower grades.
It is an activity where I gave the kids (preps) a number on a post-it note. The numbers ranged
from teens to low hundreds – as in 12 to 123. The kids were allowed to choose their number but I
told them no numbers below 10.
Most chose well – on occasion I cut a number back because I thought it was too challenging or I
‘upped’ a number because I believed the number the child had chosen was not challenging
enough.
They then needed to make that number at least 2 different ways. I gave them a choice
from the following materials:
- -Tens frames and counters
- Unifix (no tower bigger than 10)
- Mini bead frames
- Popsticks and rubber bands (no bundle bigger then 10)
- Unifix
- Money
- Dice (I had a prep make the number 34 today with 6 dice showing 5 dots and another dice
- Showing 4 dots – great stuff!)
After they make their number they need to record (draw. take a photo on the Ipad) their work.
Their work was great and blew the teachers away. Quite a few kids chose MAB and used it well.
Quite a few did not. It's a resource but not the only one.
Hope this has helped and not confused the issue even more Michelle.
All the best,
Rob.
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