Three wonderful things happen when you use literature to enhance your existing mathematics program.  One, curiosity is generated from the literature being used.  Two, the literature creates questions that propel your students’ mathematical understandings.  Three, students develop a relationship between the real world and mathematics through the literature. Children of all ages, yes, even in middle school, love to be read to.  Use this to your advantage and start spicing up your math lessons.

Literature Ideas

COUNTING

The Twelve Circus Rings, Seymour Chwast - Students count the performers in the circus as it is read. Have students write their own versions of the story, which follows the rhythm of The Twelve Days of Christmas.

The Hundred Penny Box, Sharon Bell Mathis  - Students can count, measure, and weigh pennies.  Write “Penny Autobiographies” writing a paragraph about each year of their life on a penny shaped piece of paper, creating a book shaped like a penny.  Fantastic class fundraiser - collect a mile of pennies!

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Patterns and Functions

Socrates and the Three Pigs, Mitsumasa Anno - Have students draw and color all of the ways that a red pig, a blue pig and a yellow pig could live in the three houses.  Try the problem again, this time, more than one pig can live in each house.  How do the possibilities compare?

The King’s Chessboard, David Birch - Students can use the chessboard and rice to solve the problem in the book. Measure an ounce of rice and figure how much rice is in a pound.

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Estimation / Comparison

Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is? and What’s Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew?, Robert E. Wells - Great introduction to your estimation jar.  Have students find things to compare in the classroom and around the school. Write word problems for their comparisons. Make sure they include a scale for the items they are comparing.

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Measurement

Jim and the Beanstalk, Raymond Briggs – After reading, have students measure different parts of their body, comparing their measurements to those of their classmates.  Extend by choosing one of the measurements to become the standard unit of measure and let them measure various items found around the school and in the classroom.  Let them compare their answers and discuss why their measurements are so different.

My Place in Space, Robin and Sally Hirst - There are numerous opportunities in the study of space to collect and compare data about celestial objects. Discuss distance measurements and create scale models of the solar system.

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Multiplication

One Hundred Hungry Ants, Elinor J. Pinczes - Begin lesson by scattering 100 plastic ants all over the overhead. Allow students to guess, revise and estimate the number of ants as you group them into sets of 10, turning the light off between each guess. Eventually they will figure out that there are 100 ants. This book is a great introduction to multiplication through regrouping.  Supply manipulatives and let the students recreate the groups of ants from the book on their desks. 

Melisande, E. Nesbit – This book addresses and can be used in a variety of contents.  It not only covers multiplication, but measurement, medieval times, folk/fairy tales, and critical thinking as well.

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Division

A Remainder of One, Elinor J. Pinczes – Supply manipulatives and allow students to recreate the groups from the book on their desks.

17 Kings and 42 Elephants, Margaret Mahy  - Great introduction to working with remainders.

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Geometry

A Cloak for the Dreamer, Aileen Friedman – Have a contest to design geometric coats and encourage students to explore other shapes in their designs.  Allow students to mix and match shapes to meet their needs in their designs.

Grandfather Tang’s Story, Ann Tompert – Have students make their own sets of tangrams. Use sets to recreate the shapes in the book. Give number values to the shapes and have students create math problems from the numbers and shapes, writing the problems using only the shape names. For example, what is the sum of the square plus the parallelogram plus one of the large right triangles?

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Data, Probability and Statistics

Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business, Esphyr Slobodkina – Have students make caps as shown in the book and prepare a graph to record their results. Place all caps in a lunch bag and draw a cap out 15 times, record the results on the graph.  Extend into sorting, Venn diagrams and other types of probability activities.  Ask student to show the number of gray hats, for example, as a fraction, ratio, percent or decimal.

Chrysanthemum, Kevin Henkes –Have students graph the number of letters in their names; extend to include their family’s names as well.

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FRACTIONS

The Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Fraction Book, Jerry Pallotta – Supply each child with a real chocolate bar and have fun!  Have students model each of the fractions from the book with their bars, then draw and label each fraction.  Extend lesson by having students create their own word problems from the ingredients.  Challenge with the question of “Why are there no chocolate bars on the pages for the fractions 4, 6, 7, and 8? Clean up is a cinch!

Gator Pie, Louise Mathews – Fun lesson for adding or multiplying common fractions.  Click here for Gator Pie fraction lesson plan.

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Money

Pigs Will Be Pigs – Fun With Money and Math, Amy Axelrod - Great introduction to adding and multiplying decimals.

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