Cuisenaire chopsticks
Cuisenaire chopsticks are an educational tool. They are an interactive, hands-on way to explore math and learn math concepts, such as: B. the four basic arithmetic operations, working with fractions and finding divisors .
They are named after the Belgian school inspector Georges Cuisenaire (1891–1975). He used colored chopsticks to show children how to capture the numbers (as symbols) and to do arithmetic operations. The length depends on the numerical value, but there are no centimeter markings on the chopsticks. The only important thing for the child is that, for example, the 7 cm stick is longer than the 4 cm stick and that the stick is larger than the 3 cm stick. The child also learns that the 3 and 4 cm chopsticks together make up the length of the 7 cm chopstick.
According to Caleb Gattegno, "Georges Cuisenaire showed in the early 1950s that students who were traditionally taught and rated as 'weak' made great strides as they resorted to using the material. They became 'very good' at traditional Calculate if they were allowed to manipulate the bars. "
history
Educators Maria Montessori and Friedrich Froebel had used rods to represent numbers, but it was Georges Cuisenaire who introduced the rods, which were to be used worldwide from the 1950s. In 1952 he published Les nombres en couleurs (Numbers in Color) which outlined their use. Cuisenaire, a violin player, taught both music and arithmetic in the elementary school in Thuin . He wondered why children found it easy and enjoyable to learn a tune and didn’t find math easy or enjoyable. These comparisons with music and its representation led Cuisenaire to experiment in 1931 with a set of ten sticks sawn from wood with lengths of 1 cm to 10 cm. He painted each length of the stick a different color and began using that color in his math lessons. The invention remained almost unknown outside the village of Thuin for about 23 years, until in April 1953 the British mathematician and mathematics teacher Caleb Gattegno was invited to observe the students in Thuin using the sticks. By this point he had already established the International Commission for the Study and Improvement of Mathematics Education (CIEAEM) and the Association of Teachers of Mathematics , but this marked a turning point in his understanding:
Then Cuisenaire led us to a table in the corner of the room where the students stood around a pile of colored sticks doing additions that seemed unusually difficult for children of this age. At this sight all other impressions of the surroundings disappeared to be replaced by a growing excitement. After Cuisenaire asked questions of his first and second grade students and immediately heard their answers with full confidence and accuracy, the excitement turned into overwhelming excitement and a sense of enlightenment.
Gattegno called the bars "Cuisenaire bars" and began testing and popularizing them. Seeing that the wands enabled students to "expand their latent math skills in creative and fun ways", Gattegno's pedagogy changed radically as he began to hold back and allow students to take a leading role:
Cuisenaire's invention of the wands led me to teach, through non-interference, what makes it necessary to watch and listen to the signs of truth that are made but seldom known.
While the material has of course found an important place in countless teacher-centered lessons, Gattegno's student-centered practice has inspired a number of educators.
rod
| colour | Length (in centimeters) |
|---|---|
| White | 1 |
| red | 2 |
| Light green | 3 |
| purple | 4th |
| yellow | 5 |
| Dark green | 6th |
| black | 7th |
| brown | 8th |
| blue | 9 |
| orange | 10 |
There is a direct connection between the color families and the numbers: The prime numbers 1 and 7 are white or black, 5 and 10 are yellow or orange, multiples of 2 have red tones (red, purple, brown), multiples of 3 are green or blue.
Use in math class
The sticks are used in the classroom for a variety of math ideas and with a large age group of learners. Topics for which they are used are:
- Counting, sequences, patterns and algebraic thinking
- Addition and subtraction (additive reasoning)
- Multiplication and division (multiplicative thinking)
- Fractions, Ratios and Proportions
- Modular arithmetic leading to group theory
Use in foreign language teaching
Although they are primarily used for math, they have also become popular in foreign language teaching , particularly The Quiet Path . They can be used
- to demonstrate most grammatical structures such as preposition of place, comparative and superlative, determinant, tense, adverb of time, manner, etc.,
- to show sentence and word stress , ascending and descending intonation and word groupings,
- to create a visual model of constructs, e.g. B. the English verb form system
- to represent physical objects: clocks, floor plans, maps, people, animals, fruits, tools, etc. that can lead to the creation of stories to be told by the students like in this video.
Web links
- Calculate with Cuisenaire sticks. A handout for primary school teachers
- Video: Learning to calculate with Cuisenaire sticks, part 1
- Learn Fractions with Cuisenaire Rods. Introduction
supporting documents
- ↑ Cuisenaire® chopsticks are coming to America . Etacuisenaire.com. Archived from the original on January 23, 2013. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
- ↑ Simon Gregg: How I Teach with Cuisenaire Staffs . mathagogy.com. Retrieved April 22, 2014.
- ↑ Teaching groups with Cuisenaire staffs . Teachertech.rice.edu. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
- ↑ Caleb Gattegno: The educational science part 2B: The consciousness of mathematization , ISBN 978-0878252084 .
- ^ Froebel: Georges Cuisenaire created numbers in color . Froebelweb.org. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
- ↑ a b Caleb Gattegno: For mathematics lessons Volume 3 , 2nd. Edition, Educational Solutions, 2011, ISBN 978-0-87825-337-1 , pp. 173-178 (accessed October 28, 2016).
- ↑ a b Simon Gregg, Mike Ollerton, Helen Williams: Cuisenaire - from Early Years to Adult . Association of Mathematics Teachers, Derby 2017, ISBN 978-1-898611-97-4 (accessed October 3, 2017).
- ↑ Beginner Silent Way exercises using Cuisenaire rods . glenys-hanson.info. Retrieved April 25, 2015.
- ↑ English verb tenses: a dynamic presentation using the Cuisenaire Rods . glenys-hanson.info. Retrieved April 25, 2015.
- ↑ Silent Way: rods, describing a scene (part 6 of 8) . YouTube. April 11, 2010. Retrieved October 24, 2013.