Cuisenaire rods are rods used in elementary school as well as other levels of learning and even with adults. They were initially used for mathematics and are now typically used to demonstrate vulgar fractions (generally called "common fractions" in the US.) However, this is not the only use that can be made of them. Indeed, they have also become popular in language-teaching classrooms. They can be used to teach items such as prepositions of place, sentence and word stress and used to represent a series of useful situations for a language lesson. The rods (reglettes in the original French) are named after their inventor, Georges Cuisenaire (1891-1976), a Belgian primary school teacher, who published a booklet on their use in 1952 called 'Les nombres en couleurs'.

In the system, there are 10 rods measuring 1 cm to 10 cm. Rods of equal length are assigned the same colour. Most Cuisenaire rods follow this system:

• White rod = 1 cm.
• Red rod = 2 cm.
• Light green rod = 3 cm.
• Lavender rod = 4 cm.
• Yellow rod = 5 cm.
• Dark green rod = 6 cm.
• Black rod = 7 cm.
• Brown rod = 8 cm.
• Blue rod = 9 cm.
• Orange rod = 10 cm.

Other coloured rods

A Dr Catherine Stern also devised a set of coloured rods produced by staining wood with aesthetically pleasing colours.

And in 1961 Seton Pollock produced the Colour Factor system, consisting of rods from lengths 1 to 12 cm. The odd-numbered lengths are cold colours, and the even-numbered lengths of warm colours. More information at http://www.coloracademy.co.uk/Subjects/Math/Math.htm

External links

• Cuisenaire Rods in the language classroom – article by John Mullen]
• The English Verb Tense System: A dynamic presentation using the Cuisenaire Rods
• Some Silent Way exercises for beginners using coloured rods
• ETA/Cuisenaire Educational resources for teachers

Mathematics education

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