Cuisenaire rods

We have been using cuisenaire rods in the class since the first few days of school. 

The students like to play with them - build towers, making patterns and creating complex enclosures for my little ponies. 

Now we are starting to use them to further their learning of numbers and partitioning. When the students use partitioning they are able to break numbers apart and put them together again.

Cuisenaire rods allow us to play and learn about numbers.  These pictures were taken the first day we used them in a lesson.  I put these pictures in the big screen and each student talked about what they were doing with the rods.    

 

 

Most students started with some kind of stairs model.

The blue rod is the same length as one black and one red rod.  The blue rod is 9cm, black is 7cm and red is 2cm.  By playing with the rods students will soon know that 9 = 7 + 2.  This kind of thinking is extremely complex if I expected the students to use the conventional symbols and product written work BUT when we play we can learn it and have lots of fun. 

Part of my job is observing the students thinking.  In this building one yellow rod is used while the longer rods are stacked - both equal 5 cm.  By observing, I would know if he already knew the yellow rod is 5 or if he experimented to find a match.  Both skill are important to mathematical thinking but I need to know which he used to support him further.

 

Ask your child about their creation.  Don't ask about length yet as we haven't started to learn it.  Focus on what they notice about their picture and their classmates.