USING CUISENAIRE RODS IN THE ELEMENTARY ENGLISH

! USING CUISENAIRE RODS
IN THE ELEMENTARY
ENGLISH-LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
by Michael Aliprandini (michael@acle.it)
Cuisenaire rods were developed as a tool for teaching mathematics, but
they can also be a versatile tool in the English-language classroom.
Below are some ideas for how you can use them with your students to
develop their listening and speaking skills. Experiment with them—you’ll
discover many new ways to use the rods, and they can become an
additional tool in your teaching toolbox.
1. Use the rods to teach/practice the colors.
• Hide a rod behind your back and have students guess the color.
• Show them five different colored rods, ask them to close their
eyes, remove one of the rods, and then have them look and tell
you which color is missing.
• “Show me black. Show me white. Show me green.” “What
color is this?” “What color is that?” Have a few students take
over your role. Then have students take turns doing the activity
in pairs or small groups.
2. Use the rods to teach/practice the numbers, mathematics,
countable nouns, singular and plural, possession.
• “Take two rods.” “Take four green rods.”
• “How many rods are there?” “How many rods have you got?”
“Has Laura got a red rod?” “How many rods has Lorenzo got?”
• “Take four rods. Take two rods. How many rods have you
got?” “Take six rods. Take two rods away. How many rods
have you got?”
! 3. Use the rods to teach/practice prepositions of place.
• “Put the green rod on the red rod.” “Put the red rod under your
desk.” “Put the orange rod on your head.”
• “Is the black rod near the blue rod?”
• “Where is the brown rod?”
• Hide the rods around the classroom, and create a scavenger
hunt. Students find the rods and say where they are, i.e. “A blue
rod is near the window.”
• In pairs, students take the same number and color of rods. They
put a book or notebook in between them, and one of the
students arranges the rods on the desk. Then he/she explains to
his partner the arrangement, using prepositions of place, and
the other student listens in order to build the same arrangement.
After the explanation, the students remove the book and check
that the arrangements are the same. Pairs then change roles.
4. Use the rods to teach/practice vocabulary sets.
• “Take a yellow rod. Which foods are yellow?” “Take a brown
rod. Which foods/drinks are brown?” “What do you like
eating? What color is [that food]? Take the [color of that food]
rod.”
• Have students take some rods and build a room of the house. In
pairs, the students take turns asking about the rooms. “Is that a
bed? Is that a chair? Is that a desk?”
• Have students use the rods to represent their family. In pairs,
the students take turns asking about who each person/pet is. “Is
this your father? Is this your mother? Is this you? Is this your
dog?”
5. Use the rods to teach/practice the present continuous.
• “The blue rod is standing up. The red rod is sleeping. The
yellow rod is jumping.”
• “What’s the yellow rod doing?”
! 6. Use the rods to teach/practice comparatives and superlatives.
• “Take two different rods. Which rod is shorter? Which rod is
longer?”
• “Take three different rods. Stand them up. Which rod is the
tallest? Which rod is the shortest?”
7. Use the rods to teach/practice syllables.
• Call out a word and have students use the rods to mark
syllables and syllable stress, short equal-sized rods for
unstressed syllables, a longer rod for the stressed syllable.
“Banana.” “Orange.” “Television.” “Basketball.” “Monkey.”
8. Use the rods to teach/practice word stress in a sentence.
• Students take rods of equal lengths, one rod per word in a
simple sentence. Say the sentence without stress, i.e. “My dog
is white.” Then have students take another rod of a different
length. Say the sentence with different stresses and have them
replace one of the short rods with the longer rod, depending on
the stress, i.e. “MY dog is white.” “My DOG is white.” “My
dog is WHITE.”
9. Use the rods to teach/practice word order.
• Call out a sentence, i.e. “I like dogs.” Students can represent this
sentence with three rods and then repeat the sentence. Then say, “I
don’t like dogs.” Students take a different rod and put add “don’t”
to the sentence and repeat it. “Do you like dogs?” Students put the
“Do…” at the beginning of the sentence. Try this with negative and
question forms for “have got” and the present continuous.
10. Use the rods to practice directions.
• Tell students to make a little city and/or a labyrinth. Then in pairs
they take turns guiding their partner through the ‘streets,’ using
expressions such as “Go straight,” “Turn left,” etc.
! 11. Use the rods to tell stories.
• With a little imagination, the rods can be used as characters and
elements in a story. Tell a simple story to the class, using the
rods to narrate. Then retell the story, moving the rods
appropriately and eliciting the language of the story from the
students. In pairs or small groups, the students can then take
turns retelling the story and/or inventing stories of their own.
You can use simple stories such as: “This is Mr. Black. He is
opening the door. He’s going into the house. He’s sitting in the
armchair and watching television…” and/or stories which the
students know or which they have already read in class.