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Lorem Ipsum Dolor Spring 2016
8
Dana continued to seek other instructional aids to help her students
with math. Because Jim was a teacher and knew how his own students
struggled to master their fractions' standards, he offered to demonstrate his
Fractions 16ths manipulative. Dana knew exactly where her students were in
terms of their ability level, based on recent assessments and performance on
classwork. She openly stated that her students were eventually going to learn
fractions, but they were not ready for that standard.
Jim quickly assembled the Fraction 16ths manipulative by sliding the
appropriate slides into the main piece before he put it on the table. Dana
immediately began to follow the same steps to use with this manipulative as
she did with other manipulatives: find the Braille whole numbers on the slides
first and then find the fraction in between the slides on the main part. Dana
initially slid her fingers left to right on the main part and then paused. She
tried again, grinned, and then requested a more detailed explanation.
Jim began his demonstration of the manipulative by stating the students
in his inclusion regular education classroom often have difficulty realizing that
there are fractional parts between whole numbers. After Dana briefly
examined the 24" manipulative, she asked to use the 32" Fractions 16th
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