How to Use Cuisenaire Rods to Teach English
Cuisenaire Rods are a set of colored rods usually of 1 centimeter cross section and of 10 lengths from 1 to 10 centimeters that are used for teaching number concepts and the basic operations of arithmetic
| Colour | Common abbreviation | Length (in centimetres) |
|---|---|---|
| White | w | 1 |
| Red | r | 2 |
| Light green | g | 3 |
| Purple (or pink) | p | 4 |
| Yellow | y | 5 |
| Dark green | d | 6 |
| Black | b | 7 |
| Brown (or “tan”) | t | 8 |
| Blue | B | 9 |
| Orange | O | 10 |
Cuisenaire Rods in the Language Classroom
Though primarily used for mathematics, they have also become popular in language-teaching classrooms.
They can be used to:
- Demonstrate most grammatical structures such as prepositions of place, comparatives & superlatives, determiners, tenses, adverbs of time, manner, etc.
- Show sentence and word stress, rising and falling intonation and word groupings
- Create a visual model of constructs, for example the English verb tense system .
Interested in Learning More?
These are some articles about the topic that you should check out
- donaldecherry’s channel on Youtube.com
- Using Cuisenaire rods with young learners on OneStopEnglish.com
- Cuisenaire rods in the language classroom on teachingenglish.org.uk
- Silent Way on teachingenglish.org.uk
- Silent Way on donaldcherry.com
- Holistic grammar with Cuisenaire rods on ilovetefl.wordpress.com
- Cuisenaire Rods on sandymillin.wordpress.com
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