Throughout the past decade and a half I have always been on the lookout for quality math manipulatives for my classroom. Not only did I want effective math manipulatives for learning but also math manipulatives that served a purpose to meet the needs of my students. In comes meeting some of my friends at the EAI booth at NCTM National 2017 and being introduced to Exploragons. Needless to say, I fell in love with all that came along with the teacher set and was quickly using them (more to come on that, soon I promise).
Well, fast forward to last month and EAI reached out to me to see if I would like to try the Exploragons 360 and I jumped on it! The Exploragons 360 pack came in the mail and I couldn’t wait to play, seriously…. and this comes from someone who HATED geometry in High School.
Disclaimer: I was not financially compensated for this post. I received a sample for review purposes. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience.
What are Exploragons 360?
Exploragons 360 is a set of manipulatives geared toward sixth grade and above. The teacher pack comes with 76 super colorful Exploragons pieces in 8 different colors and 8 different lengths, 4 Exploragon 360 circles, 15 Dry Erase Task Cards and 20 Quick Check Cards. Seriously, so much for so little… don’t believe me? Check it out!
How do I Use Exploragons 360?
Great question! Within the pack there are the 76 different pieces and 4 circles. This is where I started first of course. I had to have some play time! I started to make some pretty triangles, some moveable quadrilaterals (yes, those angles can easily change) and so much more. I might have gotten a little distracted while doing this but that’s the point of exploration!
Next, I pulled out the Quick Check cards. I pulled off two of the cards and notice that they were describing the radius and diameter of a circle. I decided that would be cool to discuss with students and then also let show it on the Exploragons 360 circles. Okay, I’m really liking this now. There is purpose to using the manipulative and it connects to VOCABULARY! WOO HOO!
And then last, there are 15 different Dry Erase Task Cards. These babies are detailed and build upon each other as they go up in the task cards. Students are given complete instructions (as well as objectives) for the task at hand. Then students work through this task using different pieces of the Exploragons set. As you can see in this task card it built upon the quick check cards that I had just used, added in some measurement and then had students extend their learning with a short answer response. We all know how important communication in math is and whenever we can have our students “talking” about what they are learning it will build better connections.
How Can I Get These AMAZING Math Manipulatives?
So happy that you asked. Well, my friends at EAI are so nice and they are offering a 15% discount to anyone interested in purchasing Exploragons Teacher Sets for their classroom. Jump on over, check them out and grab some today. Use the code SCCSAVE15 at checkout to save your 15% and make sure to do it soon because the savings is only good through May 13, 2018!
These truly are not only perfect when you are teaching concepts of geometry (which I have some more ideas coming soon), but also great for intervention, math test prep and even just end of the year review!
