- Tuesday 04 October 2016
- 0 Comments
How often have you wished for an interesting introduction to a maths lesson that focuses on a particular concept, but found it difficult to find any quality literature for the purpose? Perhaps you’ve just wanted to revise a maths concept without having to use a ‘teacher talk' or discussion.
Websites can be a great help and many are very good, explaining concepts so much better than a thousand teacher’s words. But how great is it to entice literacy-loving students into maths learning, and provide additional literacy links for those students who don’t love reading quite as much as they love maths!!
Over a number of months, we hope to provide you with a list of quality literature to support those hard-to-teach strands, sub-strands and content descriptions of maths. Wouldn’t it be great to have a bank of these to share at your school for every grade! Perhaps your maths co-ordinator would be interested in the information in this blog.
Most teachers of early childhood and lower primary children are probably aware of books like The great divide: a mathematical marathon by Dayle Ann Dodds (teaching division to Years 1–4), The doorbell rang by Pat Hutchins (teaching sharing to Kindergarten to Year 3 children), Full house by Dayle Ann Dodds (teaching fractions for Years 1–4) and One is a snail Ten is a crab by April Pulley Sayre and Jeff Sayre (teaching counting to Kindergarten to Year 2). However, there is a vast bank of other quality maths literature that teachers can access.
Statistics and Probability is one of those strands that can be difficult to teach and find literature for. Consider using these:
| Book title | Concept | Age suitability |
| Cloudy with a chance of meatballs by Judi Barrett | probability | Kindergarten to Year 3 |
| Bad luck Brad by Gail Herman | probability | Years 1–3 |
| It's probably Penny by Loreen Leedy | probability | Years 1–4 |
| Probably Pistachio by Stuart Murphy | probability | Years 1–3 |
| Pigs at odds by Amy Axelrod | probability | Years 2–4 |
| A very improbable story by Edward Einhorn | probability | Years 2–5 |
| That's a possibility by Bruce Goldstone | probability | Years 1–5 |
| Exploring graphs, chance and data by Bev Dunbar (a teaching resource with units and worksheets) | graphs, probability | Years 1–3 |
| The great graph contest by Loreen Leedy | graphs—bar graphs, pie charts, Venn diagrams and more | Years 1–3 |
| Lemonade for sale by Stuart Murphy | bar graphs | Years 1–3 |
| Pigs might fly by E Rodda | probability | Middle to Upper Primary |
Stuart Murphy writes a lot of books that focus on maths concepts. Why don’t you check out the books for different levels on his website <http://www.mathstart.net/>? There are lots of free maths activities and a musical there as well.
Literature for other maths strands and concepts will be coming in the following weeks, but if you’re wanting to get ahead, look at these websites:
• Maths matters books at <http://tinyurl.com/jmyse9u>
• http://www.the-best-childrens-books.org/math-for-kids.html
• http://www.thereadingnook.com/math/
• http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/teachers/k/literature-list/
If you’ve used some quality literature that supports maths concepts (or found some websites that have good hands-on maths activities), we’d love to hear from you. It’s a great way to help each other save time planning and make learning fun and interesting for children. (And, after all, that’s what teaching is all about—or should be!!)
For more great ideas linked to the Australian Curriculum view our Statistics and probability series.
