Cuisenaire rods

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. 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 1cm to 10cm. 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.

See also: Cuisenaire rods, Elementary school, Mathematics, Primary school, Vulgar fraction, Georges Cuisenaire