Effect of Manipulative Materials on Teaching Mathematics

Abstract

This study intended to determine Effect of Manipulative Materials in Teaching Mathematics at grade VI. It was pre-test, post-test, non-equivalent and experimental design .The researcher has choosed 15 students of grade VI. Shree Sundra Janta Secondary School Aurahi-5 as an experimental group and 15 students of Shree Lower Secondary Tenuwapatti Itatar -4 as a control group. The objective of this study was to find out the effect of the use of manipulative materials in teaching at class VI and to compare the achievement of the students that taught by using manipulative materials and the students that taught without using manipulative materials. This study was an experimental study conducted at grade VI in the two public lower secondary schools. Experimental and control groups of student were made homogeneous as nearly as possible in the basis of pre- test, scores, class size and keeping the number of student and Experimental and control groups were taught. The same topic, same teacher, same time/Duration and same economic status by using manipulative materials and conventional teaching approaches at experimental and at control groups respectively. The duration of the experimental and control groups have been 30 Days. After completing the experimental teaching, the standardized test was prepared by the researcher and administered in both the group of students. The achievement mean scores were calculated . The difference in mean achievement scores were tested using t-test for determine statistically difference between them. The t-test at the 0.05 level of significance showed that manipulative materials approaches of teaching was better than the conventional approach of teaching in mathematics. It was found that the mean score of the students of experimental group was greater than the mean score of the students of control group. statistically the difference between the mean scores was significant. Thus the researcher concluded that the use of manipulative materials was effective in teaching mathematics at lower secondary level.