Manipulatives support students with and without disabilities in mathematics. However, as students age, concrete manipulatives can be limiting and potentially not age appropriate (Satsangi, 2015). An alternative is virtual manipulatives, including app-based manipulatives. This study compared the use of app-based manipulatives to concrete manipulatives in supporting students with disabilities in solving subtraction problems with regrouping. Using an adapted alternating treatment design with three middle school students with disabilities, the researcher found app base 10 blocks were more effective in terms of solving subtraction with regrouping for two of the students. They also found that all three students were more independent with the app-based manipulatives, although only two of the three students preferred the app-based manipulatives to the concrete manipulatives.
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