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With Teacher’s Choice, I purchased Didax algebra tiles to use as manipulatives during my 7th-grade expressions-and-equations unit. The tiles are squares and rectangles of different colors and sizes. The way I used them was to represent variables, which kids typically have a hard time with, because it’s a representation of something that changes. The tiles are good for the tactile learners especially. For example, they can represent positive and negative integers and the students see how “positive” tiles cancel out “negatives.” The students just physically remove what are called “opposite pairs.” It’s a more hands-on approach to algebra. They can go through an algebraic process with an actual physical model, as opposed to being freaked out by variables or expressions.

I spent my whole $77 and then some on the tiles. I wanted to make sure each child was able to have an individual set so they could work on their own at first to get comfortable with the tiles before they started working in pairs or groups.

If I had more Teacher’s Choice money, I would buy a lot more manipulatives to work through proportions, percent increase and decrease, and rational numbers.