Math Literature

I teach fifth grade and LOVE using math literature!!! Here are some of titles I have and use:

Marilyn Burns books:
Greedy Triangle
Amanda Bean's Amazing Dream
Spaghetti and Meatballs for All

David M. Schwartz books:
How Much is a Million?
On Beyond A Million
If You Made a Million
If You Hopped Like a Frog

The "ANNO" books by Mitsumasa Anno

Math Curse
The Day With No Math
Even Steven and Odd Todd
How Big is a Foot?
Pigs Will Be Pigs
Grapes of Math
A Remainder of One
One Hundred Hungry Ants
One Grain of Rice
The King's Chessboard
The King's Commissioners
Grandfather Tang's Story
The Adventures of Penrose: The Mathematical Cat
The Number Devil
A Cloak For the Dreamer
Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angle Land
Sir Cumference and the First Round Table
Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi

Some of the Hello Math Readers are pretty good too.

An awesome book to use with linear measurement is "How Big is a Foot" by Rolf Muller...a story of how the king wants to have a bed built for the queen....and how the poor apprentice runs into trouble building a bed measured with apprentice sized feet vs. king sized feet. It emphasizes the need for standard units of measurement.

"Clocks and More Clocks" (I don't remember the author offhand) is a great book if you're including time in your measurement unit. There are also some great scholastic books in a Hello Math Reader series (depending on the age of your class). I have "Just a Minute" by Teddy Slater but there are also many more of these easy reads which emphasize math concepts.

Hope this helped!

If you can get your hands on the Everyday Math program teachers manual for your grade level, each math unit lists books that can be used to support the math unit being taught and ideas on how to use the book with the class or a small group of students. Some examples were; The Greedy Triangle, Gator Pie, Eating Fractions, Grandfather's Tang Story, In the Next Three Seconds.

I love using literature in my math class and my students really enjoy it as well. Here is a brief list of the books I use on a regular basis. If you'd like a more in depth list of others...email me!

The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins (division)
Grandfather Tang's Story by Ann Tompert (geometry and tangrams)
The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns (geometry)
How Big is a Foot? by Rolf Miller (measurement)
One Hundred Hungry Ants by Elinor Pinczes (grouping)
The Math Curse by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith (problem solving)

Look for books by Mariyn Burns. She has a great one using literature. There's a book called "The Bedspread" that you can use for symmetry. The women in the story are using needlework to decorate opposite ends of a bedspread. They should be symmetrical at the end but they are very different because the women remember different things about their house that they are trying to make in needlepoint. Also, have students paint a design on half of a paper and fold it. Rub the outside, open it up, and there will be symmetrical designs on it. Have them then create symmetricl mittens by choosing a mitten already decorated and creating the other half. Play "What's my rule" with assorted shapes to teach the characteristics of shapes.

The Three Hat Day
Each Orange Has Eight Slices
The Doorbell Rang
The Foot Book
The Grouchy Ladybug
How Much Is A Foot?
How to Eat Fried Worms
Eating Fractions
There are many others that I have used but I just cannot think. Don't have my resources handy at present. Hope these few help!

The Pigs Will Be Pigs series deals with everything from money to measurement to elapsed time to geometry. The Greedy Triangle and Grandfather Tang's Story are good to use for geometry, and Hershey's Fraction Book is good to introduce equivalent fractions. (Also DELICIOUS!)Sir Cumference and the Round Table is good to use too. Hope these lit ideas help. Good luck!

Have you considered using activities with the newspaper? For our math night one year, our local paper sent a rep from NIE, Newspapers in Education. There are things you can do for math and literature nights. it can cover addition, subtraction, statistics, etc. so there is a wide age range. We also had each class post a graph that the families had to fill out with post-it notes. Something simple like favorite kind of movie, or candy bar, or number of people in your household. Then each class had an estimation jar of some kind and we used these as door prizes for those who came closest. The library even had a guess the amount of books contest. you could also have stations to measure and weigh things. We like to combine books with everything, so using the M&M's counting book or Hershey book is great. Also the tangram book...Grandfather Tang? Hope this helped. Michelle

I have used literature before-- I was thinking of using "Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday" by Judith Viorst.

Math literature

*Number Sense
-A Grain of Rice
-A Million Chameleons
-The Baker's Dozen
-Betcha!
-No Jumping on the Bed

*Geometry
-The Boy with Square Eyes
-Building a Bridge
-Draw Me a Star
-Eight Hands Round

*Time
-A Circle of Seasons
-All in a Day
-The Grouchy Ladybug
-Get up and Go!
-Just a Minute

*Fractions
-Apple Fractions
-Clean Sweep Campers
-Gator Pie
-Give me Half!
-One Hungry Cat
-Pete's a Pizza
-One Riddle, One Answer

*Money
-Benny's Pennies
-Bunny Money
-The Coin Counting Book
-A Chair for my Mother
-Monster Money
-Jellybeans for Sale
-On Market Street
-Pigs will be Pigs