Effectiveness of Manipulative Materials in Teaching Mathematics at Secondary Level

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of manipulative materials on students’ achievement in parallelogram and circle of geometry at grade IX. A pre-test and post-test of quasi-experimental research design was used to compare the achievement of two groups experimental and control. The researcher chose 36 students of grade IX of Shree Bhanu Bhakta Aacharya Secondary School, Galyang-3, as an experimental group and 39 students of Shree Janasewa Secondary School, Waling-14 as a control group. After completion of the targeted chapters, researcher collected the data from mathematics achievement test and a set of questionnaire related to five point Likert scale. The mathematics achievement test were used for the first objective asto compare the effectiveness of the manipulative materials in parallelogram and circle, similarly; questionnaire and observation were used for second objective as to analyse the students view towards the felling of using manipulative materials in learning parallelogram and circle. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between the average achievement score of experimental and control groups on post-test. This finding illustrated that the students in the experimental group performed better when using manipulative materials than the control group without using manipulative materials. Additionally, a set of questionnaire based on Likert scale was used for the finding of students view; and change was recorded under observation. Then, the result had shown positive view about manipulative materials in learning parallelogram and circle of geometry.