The Effects Of Teaching Fractions By Using Physical Manipulatives On Standard Four Pupil’s Performance

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this experimental study was to examine the effects of teaching fractions by using physical manipulatives on standard four pupils‘ performance. The study hypothesized that, the pupils would consecutively perform significantly higher on addition of simple fractions when would be taught using physical manipulatives with hands-on practices as compared to when would be taught by using physical manipulatives for demonstration alone. Further, the study hypothesized that boys would outperform their girl‘s counterparts across all the three conditions of this experiment. The study included 36 standard four pupils whereby 18 were girls and 18 were boys. The participants were obtained through stratified random sampling from Olturoto Primary school in Arusha District Council in Northern Tanzania. The study employed Within-Participants Repeated Measures Experimental Design for data collection whereby tests were designed for measuring the pupil‘s performance under the given experimental conditions. The obtained scores performance for the pupils were analyzed through one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for repeatedmeasure designs SPSS version 20.0. The study found that pupils performed slightly better when were taught by using physical manipulatives with hands-on practices than demonstration of physical manipulatives alone. Further, they performed better under demonstration of physical manipulatives than without using physical manipulatives at all on addition of simple fractions. Moreover, the study found that boys performed better than girls in all three teaching strategies. The study therefore recommended the teaching and learning tasks in primary schools should involve use of physical objects.