Eric.ed.gov – Beginning Reading and Math in PS 133, New York City. A Report.

This booklet describes the program in Harlem (PS 133) which is based upon Dr. Caleb Gattegno’s reading and mathematics in color. The program was primarily intended to test the teaching of Gattegno’s methods and materials. PS 133 was considered to be a good site for the program because it was stable, pedagogically traditional, and staffed by a large number of experienced teachers and a principal who was known to be a dedicated, competent administrator. In Gattegno’s reading program, color is used only for the purpose of introducing words, and once sounds are mastered, color is discarded. The use of color simulates a phonetic language. All groups of letters with the identical sound are represented by the same color. Thus the “o” in “so,””know,” and “though” belong to the same group. In the mathematics program, Gattegno used the colored rods of Georges Cuisenaire in order to represent basic mathematical operations as well as fractions. Gattegno claims that students move rapidly from the use of the rods to abstraction and mental computation in order to derive answers to problems. The evaluation of the program used data from the Metropolitan Achievement Test scores; the results tended to indicate general improvement in reading and mathematics among the experimental group. (Author/JW)