Want to know why Rekenreks are one of the best maths inventions? Read on!
Rekenrek might sound like Double Dutch, because it is in fact a Dutch invention, created by a genius called Adrian Treffers. Not to be confused with an abacus, the Rekenrek offers far more to the budding mathematician (in my opinion!).
You will notice when looking at the Rekenrek, that there are 100 beads: 10 rows of 10 beads. You will also see that on each row there are 5 red and 5 white. Halfway down, the colours change, which is another genius feature. This is the kind of conversation I have with children when first introducing the Rekenrek. I ask them what they notice and pull all these features from them through questioning.
Check out my workshop, for more in depth ideas of how to use a Rekeknrek.
Workshop reviews
Just attended my first parent workshop with Truependous Tutoring and it was amazing! Who’d ever thought that working on fractions would be fun and made easy to understand through the use of the ingenious Rekenrek tool? The pictorial representations were really useful as it helped me to gain a good understanding on how the number bonds and fractions link. I believe that Laura‘s innovative pedagogical approach/methods will not only facilitate your child in gaining a deeper learning of the subject matter, it will definitely help parents too as it did for me tonight!
Ceiwa, Parent/Teacher Workshop Attendee
Laura is the most wonderful tutor I have ever met. We have attended multiple virtual workshops and they have been very engaging and informative. If you’re looking for a tutor for your child, Laura is the one!
Kieron, Parent/Teacher Workshop Attendee
I have attended two parent workshops with Laura – these were fantastic and gave me a lot of strategies to help support my daughter’s maths learning. As a result, she has come on a lot with her mental maths skills and times tables. I highly recommend this service.
Emma, Parent/Teacher Workshop Attendee
How to use a Rekenrek
Before delving deeper into how to use the Rekenrek with a group of children, I always give them 30 seconds or so to ‘mess about’ with it. In fact, I do this with all concrete resources I introduce as I find they then feel more relaxed about the maths. It also means their urge to fiddle with the resource is out of their system more so than if you ban ‘messing about’. They love shaking all the beads backwards and forwards and making patterns with them.
Once they are done with the messing about phase, I talk about the Rules of the Rekenrek.
‘Right ready’ is an important phrase to use. The beads start on the right and you push them to the left to show a number.
Perhaps the most important rule of the Rekenrek is that you have to make the number in as few ‘pushes’ as possible. Counting of individual beads is completely banned! This is to encourage children to develop their maths fluency. For example, if you wanted children to push 8 beads to the left, they would have to use their knowledge of number bonds within 10, to know 5+3=8. You’ll see here how having the 5 red and 5 white beads really helps with this. They could alternatively see 10 beads on the row and there are two left behind.
When I use the Rekenrek with children I always talk about the different ways of ‘building’ a number and they can choose the one they prefer.
I love this resource for supporting children with counting in tens and fives. It’s great for creating arrays, doubles facts, number bonds within and to 10, 20, 100 etc. It’s also absolutely fantastic for teaching children to add 9, 19. I use it frequently too for teaching fractions, decimals and percentages.
Learn more!
You can check out my workshop ‘What the heck’s a Rekenrek’ to find out more about how wonderful these resources are.
Head to recommended products to purchase a small Rekenrek with 20 beads, or a large with 100.
Click here to view a Rekenrek online, or download it as an app.
Make sure you change the colours halfway down if using 100 beads.
