Exploring Sets through Math-Related Book Pairs

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

This lesson integrates reading, writing, viewing, and visually representing mathematical ideas while simultaneously strengthening home-school communication. The two math-related books, or the “book pair,” used in the lesson give real-world contexts to the strategy of grouping objects to be counted. The books from the book pair both follow predictable formats that support emerging readers, and students can use these structures as frames for their own writing. After reading each of the books, students explore their school and home environments to find and represent their own examples of sets. In the culminating activity, students create pages for a collaborative class book of sets.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

Stapleless Book: Students select page templates and then design pages that can be printed out, cut and folded into an eight-page book.

Multigenre Mapper: Students use this online tool to create multigenre, multimodal texts that include a drawing and three written texts. They can name the genres for each section, making the tool flexible for multiple writing activities.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Pairing math-related books encourages children to "extend their understandings of each text differently than if only one text had been read" (Short & Harste, 1996, p. 537) and to apply mathematical ideas to the world around them (NCTM Connections Standard, 2000; Whitin & Whitin 2004). In this lesson, two books give students mathematical lenses to view their environment. Involving families gives children further opportunities to talk, write, and draw about mathematical patterns and relationships (NCTM Communication Standard, 2000). Finally, children become authors of their own nonfiction texts, using the formats of the book pairs as guides.

Further Reading

Whitin, David J. & Phyllis Whitin. 2004. New Visions for Linking Literature and Mathematics. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English; and Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

 

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. 2000. Overview of Standards for Grades Pre-K-12. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

 

Short, Kathy G., and Harste, Jerome E. 1996. Creating Classrooms for Authors and Inquirers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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