by PRP Group, on 10/02/2023
When students have experiences with manipulatives in math that engage their bodies and as many of their senses as possible, they develop a conceptual foundation that engages the full power of their mathematical minds. This allows them to build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding as they move from concrete experiences to pictorial representations to abstractly communicating about math with symbols, words and numbers.
Abstract learning reinforces memorization and the idea of math as answer-finding, whereas concrete and pictorial learning emphasizes reasoning and critical thinking. For students to learn math in a way that supports how their brains naturally learn, they need experiences that involve their senses, that pictorially represent those experiences and that connect those experiences to symbols, words and numbers.