3 lessons by Marilyn Burns: using storybooks to teach math

Instructor, April, 2005 by Marilyn Burns

For many of us, the storybook shelf isn't the first place we go to when we start to plan a math lesson. But children's books can be a great math teaching tool. They spark students' imaginations in ways that exercises in textbooks or workbooks often don't. When I visit classrooms, I find that connecting math to literature can boost the confidence of those who love books but are "math-wary." And students who love the abstraction of math can learn to appreciate stories in a whole new way. Here are just three of the many possible lessons based on favorite classroom read alouds.

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LESSON #1

ADDITION WITH QUACK AND COUNT

When I first read Keith Baker's wonderful Quack and Count (Harcourt Brace, 1999), I knew it would be ideal for a first-grade lesson about ways to break numbers apart into different addends. On my next visit to the classroom, I began our lesson by gathering students on the rug. I showed the children the cover and read the title and author's name.

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"It's about ducks!" Nelson exclaimed after my introduction. "Ducks go quack," he added.

"Let's find out," I responded. I opened to the first spread and read, "Seven ducklings in a row. Count those ducklings as they go." The children counted along with me as I pointed to each of the ducklings.

I asked the children to count as I read the next rhyme--first the six ducklings on the left and then the one duckling on the right.

"How many ducklings do you think there are all together?" I asked. Some of the children knew that there were seven, while others weren't so sure. Together we counted all of them to verify that there were indeed seven!

I continued reading the rest of the book aloud and asking questions in this same way. On each page, we counted. We then had a class discussion of the book, talking about all the things the ducklings did.

For the second reading, I turned the focus to recording equations that would show our work. As I read, I wrote number sentences on chart paper to keep track of the ducklings. For example, as the children counted the six ducks on the left and one on the right, I recorded:

7 = 6 + 1

I had the children read the number sentence aloud as I pointed to the symbols. Then I invited them to help me write equations for the rest of the story. A nice feature of this story is that the illustrations near the end of the book encourage thinking about seven with more than two addends. When we finished the rereading, the chart looked like this:

7 = 6 + 1  7 = 2 + 5
7 = 5 + 2  7 = 1 + 6
7 = 4 + 3  7 = 2 + 3 + 2
7 = 3 + 4  7 = 2 + 2 + 2 + 1

I then gave the children seven Unifix cubes each and had them show the combinations by representing each addend with a "train" of cubes.

Lastly, I gave the children an independent assignment. Each child chose one of the number sentences from the chart, copied it, and illustrated it. "You can draw ducklings or any other shapes," I told them. The result: artful number sentences from ducks to diamonds! Children ready to take on an additional challenge also wrote and illustrated their own equations, with combinations of more than two numbers that added up to seven.

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LESSON #2

TEACHING MEASUREMENT WITH INCH BY INCH

In Leo Lionni's Inch by Inch (HarperTrophy, 1996), a clever inchworm persuades a robin to spare his life by offering to measure the robin's tail. He goes on to measure a flamingo's neck, a toucan's beak, and other animals' parts. When I shared this book with a group of lively second graders, they were delighted by the way the worm inched his way to safety.

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After reading the story together, the children and I launched into a measurement lesson. We used a one-inch square tile to measure the length of the inchworm in the book.

Then I put down the book and asked the children, "I wonder if any things in our classroom measure about one inch long." We tested various items--the width of a chalkboard eraser, the length of a pencil, the spines of several books. None was close. Then I held up an envelope with a postage stamp on it. Several of the children clapped when they saw that a side of the stamp was just about one inch long. Then we measured a quarter and discovered that it was one inch across.

On a sheet of chart paper, I wrote One Inch and underneath recorded stamp and quarter. With the One-Inch Challenge underway, the children moved about the classroom with their one-inch tile "worms" in search of objects to measure. As they called out items, I listed them on the chart. After about 10 minutes, I called the children back to the rug and we reviewed the items on our list, from crayon stubs to barrettes.

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Next we moved on to measuring longer lengths, starting with our index fingers. I traced my index finger on the board and showed them how I could measure its length in two ways--using tiles and also using a 12-inch ruler. We next measured a pencil and the height of a tissue box using the same two ways. I showed the children that there are three possible ways to record our measurements, as shown below: