Posted 12/6/11

Kingsborough Elementary School fourth grade teacher, Colleen Furlong, recently was selected to receive a “We Are Teachers” grant from ETA/Cusienaire, a maker of hands-on learning materials utilized to aid students in understanding abstract concepts and improve achievement.

Mrs. Furlong will be receiving $1,000 worth of manipulatives along with a camera to document the students using these materials. In addition, she will receive $200 for classroom supplies.

Her first place application answered the following question asked by ETA/Cusienair:

“How do you incorporate hands-on activities into your lesson plans?”

Read an excerpt of Mrs. Furlong’s answer here:

“Students will be using math manipulatives to better help them understand math concepts, including tiles, cubes, fraction pieces, graphing materials, etc. Students perform better when they can "see" how it happens. I will also use manipulatives to help students with Language Arts: sentence structure, compound words, prefixes, suffixes, and syllables. Some students are better at learning visually and if they can put their hands on it, then it makes sense.

With all the budget cuts occurring, my school could use all the help it can get. I plan on sharing with all of my colleagues; any little bit would help the students in better understanding. Students are now brought up in a very visual way, and I need to keep up.”