Children’s Books That Turbocharge the Math Curriculum

“Integrating children’s literature into math makes learning more engaging and less intimidating,” says South Carolina educator Candice Brucke in this helpful article in AMLE Magazine. “It can motivate, provoke interest, connect mathematical ideas, promote critical thinking skills, inspire a creating writing experience for students (and teachers), and provide a context that leads to problem solving.” She believes her use of well-chosen books was a major reason for very high achievement in her classes – her class ranked ninth best in the entire state in 2007. Here are some of her suggestions, including one she wrote herself:

• The Grapes of Math (Tang, 2004) and The Important Book (Brown, 1999) to teach number properties;
• A Giraffe to France (Hillard, 2000) for measurement and writing and solving equations;
• The Missing Piece (Silverstein, 2006) for missing-angle measures and sectors of a circle;
• How I Became a Pirate (Long, 2003) to assess students’ prior knowledge on the coordinate plane;
• Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi (Neuschwander, 1999) for circumference and π.
• Skippyjon Jones Lost in Spice (Schachner, 2005) for combinations and permutations;
• Wrappers Wanted: A Mathematical Adventure in Surface Area (Brucke, 2009) for surface area; 
• Chasing Vermeer (Balliett, 2005) to introduce manipulatives such as pentominoes;
• My Full Moon Is Square (Pinczes, 2002) for the concept of square numbers;
• The Lion King (Disney, 1994) for the concept of slope – students can graph the good/ill fate points for a particular character; 
• What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras? (Ellis, 2004) for the Pythagorean Theorem applied to everyday situations;
• One Grain of Rice (Demi, 1997) for exponential growth;
• Cinder Edna (Jackson, 1998) for box/scatter plots;
• Multiplying Menace: The Revenge of Rumplestiltskin (Calvert, 2006) to review fractions.

“Connecting Children’s Literature to Middle Grades Math” by Candice Brucke in AMLE Magazine, March 2014 (Vol. 1, #7, p. 23-24), www.amle.org; Brucke can be reached at cbrucke@oconee.k12.sc.us.

From the Marshall Memo #529