Authors: Norben Pabondia Agas
Abstract
Background: Weak foundational numeracy in the early grades remains a pressing concern in the Philippines, and teachers need low-cost, classroom-feasible strategies for learners who fall behind. Physical manipulatives are widely recommended, yet evidence from Philippine public-school classrooms is thin and largely unpublished.
Purpose: This classroom action research examined whether a manipulative-based intervention, delivered through a concrete–representational–abstract (CRA) sequence, was associated with improved numeracy performance among low-performing Grade 2 learners.
Method: A single-group pretest–posttest design was used. Twelve Grade 2 learners with the lowest scores on a beginning-of-year numeracy diagnostic in one public elementary school in northern Luzon were purposively selected. Over eight weeks, lessons on place value, addition with and without regrouping, properties of addition, ordinal numbers, and basic shapes and slides were taught using base-ten blocks, number lines, and pattern and attribute blocks. A 15-item, expert-validated, researcher-made test was administered before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, a paired-samples t test, a Wilcoxon signed-rank test, standardized effect sizes, and normalized gains.
Results: Mean scores rose from 3.17 (SD = 1.27; 21.1% correct) to 12.33 (SD = 1.37; 82.2% correct), a mean gain of 9.17 points (95% CI [8.23, 10.10]); t (11) = 21.65, p < .001, dz = 6.25. All 12 learners moved from the low to the high performance band, and the Wilcoxon test confirmed the result (p < .001). The average normalized gain was .78.
Conclusion: Learners improved substantially while taught with manipulatives. Because the study lacked a comparison group and used the same items at pretest and posttest, the magnitude of the effect is likely overstated and causal claims remain tentative. The findings nonetheless support the structured, CRA-based use of manipulatives as a practical intervention for early-grade learners at risk of mathematics difficulties and justify a controlled replication.
Keywords: manipulatives; early numeracy; concrete–representational–abstract; low-performing learners; place value; action research; Philippines