Use Algebra To Teach Basic Operations With Base Ten Manipulaives.
There are many kinds of base ten blocks that you can purchase, but base ten blocks are not all the same and some are much more powerful than others. First off, make sure they ARE base ten blocks, I have seen block sets where they are base seven and even base three…where seven of the x are same as an x^2 or just three y are the same as the y^2, while still quite workable doing the larger problems becomes somewhat difficult because it takes too long to count out the units. This is very much akin to getting lost in computation…many students lose track of the problem they are doing because even if they understand the concepts they can’t do the math or it takes them a long time to do the math and they forget what they were doing or trying to solve in the first place.
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