Author: meera

Telling Time with The Grouchy Ladybug

meeraLeave a comment

Lesson Overview

Read the book, The Grouchy Ladybug, by Eric Carle.

Write the 17 times (e.g. “noon or 12:00 PM” and “five or 5:00 PM”) from The Grouchy Ladybug on a separate piece of paper. Times are every hour from 5:00 AM through 5:00 PM, and 5:15 PM, 5:30 PM, 5:45 PM, and 6:00 PM.

Give each child a piece of paper (each has their own time). Ask them to fill in the clock and write down what happens in the story at their time.

Read the story a second time and students write in the activity happening on their paper.

Let students draw their scene on their paper.

Have students read their scene aloud and show their drawing.

When students illustrate their page, ask them to draw a sun where the sun would normally be at the time of their part of the story (e.g. right at the center top for noon).

— Via Memory Anderson on Eric Carle’s website 

Note: With a larger class, have two students do each time, making a total of two books.

Lesson Goals:

  • Students can position the hands of an analog clock to match a written time
  • Students can position the sun in the sky to match the time of day

Lesson Plan Materials

See this idea and more ideas in detail on Eric Carle’s website.

Also see ideas for introducing book on Educators.about.com.

Common Core State Standards this Lesson Supports

  • CCSS.Math.Content.1.MD.B.3 Tell and write time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks.
  • CCSS.Math.Content.2.MD.C.7 Tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest five minutes, using a.m. and p.m.
  • CCSS.Math.Content.3.MD.A.1 Tell and write time to the nearest minute and measure time intervals in minutes. Solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of time intervals in minutes, e.g., by representing the problem on a number line diagram.

AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner

  • AASL 1.1.6 Read, view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital) in order to make inferences and gather meaning.
  • AASL 4.1.8 Use creative and artistic formats to express personal learning.

Understanding Shapes with Grandfather Tang’s Story by Ann Tompert

meeraLeave a comment

Lesson Overview

Discuss with students What are shapes? Why do we use shapes?

Read Grandfather Tang’s Story (Dragonfly Books), by Ann Tompert, and point out how shapes can be used to tell a story. Then you let students use tangrams to fill in animal shapes and chat with them about how the pieces line up and form bigger shapes. With older students, you could make several sheets of tangram sheets into a story.

Lesson Goals

  • Students can identify shapes and can use smaller shapes to form larger, composite shapes.
  • Students can explain various places they see shapes.

Lesson Plan Materials

  • Lesson Plan Instructions: Grandfather’s Tang Story (PDF) (courtesy of Imelda Amano)
  • Also need plastic tangram pieces or enough copies of a traced tangram sheet for students to cut out
  • Also need copies of animal shapes that fit the tangrams you have

 Common Core State Standards this Lesson Supports

  • CCSS.Math.Content.K.G.B.6 Compose simple shapes to form larger shapes. For example, “Can you join these two triangles with full sides touching to make a rectangle?”
  • CCSS.Math.Content.1.G.A.2 Compose two-dimensional shapes (rectangles, squares, trapezoids, triangles, half-circles, and quarter-circles) or three-dimensional shapes (cubes, right rectangular prisms, right circular cones, and right circular cylinders) to create a composite shape, and compose new shapes from the composite shape.

AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner

  • AASL 2.1.3 Use strategies to draw conclusions from information and apply knowledge to curricular areas, real world situations, and further investigations.

Note: Modified from Library Lesson Plan Library

Understanding Perimeter with Spaghetti and Meatballs for All!

meeraLeave a comment

Lesson Overview

Read the book, Spaghetti and Meatballs for All! (Marilyn Burns Brainy Day Books), by Marilyn Burns.

Discuss how the amount of space you have around a table is the perimeter. It’s the length of the distance around the table. When you push the tables together, the tables took up the same amount of space (area) but the space around the table got smaller.

1 “Cut out squares of cardboard or use small square tiles so that children can construct the different ways the guests in the story arranged the tables. Help children experiment so they can see that Mrs. Comfort ordered the fewest tables possible. You may want to have them reconstruct some [alternate arrangements].”

2 “If children are interested, go through the book again and help them draw a picture of each new table rearrangement and figure out how many people could be seated at each. Use the words area and perimeter to talk about the size of each arrangement and the number of people it seats.”

3. “Use the cardboard squares, tiles, or drawings to investigate the following problem: Suppose their were going to be just 12 people at the family reunion. What different table arrangements are possible? Which arrangement would use the fewest tables? Which arrangement would use the most tables? (For additional challenges, try the same problem for 16, 24, 36, or any other number of people.)”

— Ideas from notes at the back of the book

Lesson Goals:

  • Students can measure the perimeter of table arrangements
  • Students can determine the fewest number of tables they would need to seat their entire class.

Lesson Plan Materials

See this idea and more ideas in detail in McKinney and Hinton 2010 p. 22.

Common Core State Standards this Lesson Supports

  • CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.1 Count to 100 by ones and by tens.
  • CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.2 Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.
  • CCSS.Math.Content.1.OA.C.5 Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting on 2 to add 2).

AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner

  • AASL 2.1.3 Use strategies to draw conclusions from information and apply knowledge to curricular areas, real-world situations, and further investigations.

A Second is a Hiccup

meeraLeave a comment

A Second Is A Hiccup, by Hazel Hutchins, explains the concept of time to young children with analogies that they can easily understand. A question begins each section (e.g. “How long is a week?”) for a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, and a year. I found that the book loses its rhythm after explaining how long a second and minute were, making this book difficult to read aloud on a cold run.

This is a good book to have on hand if asked “how long is a week?” Otherwise, I would stick to just reading the first few pages, which hold together much better than the loose structure of the rest. Watercolor illustrations are nice and show diverse families (diverse in age and ethnicity), all playing together as well as separately in their own homes.

Skip Counting by Twos

meeraLeave a comment

Lesson Overview

Read the book, How Many Feet in the Bed?, by Diane Johnston Hamm.

Focus on how the story lets students skip count by twos. When the father is in the bed, there are two feet, and when one more person gets into bed, there are four feet. Show that this is skip counting: if another person gets into bed, there will be six feet. Expand on this idea by asking, how many toes are in the bed? and skip counting fingers and toes by 10s. For older grades, add more people to the bed to cover adding and subtracting larger numbers. — Ideas from McKinney and Hinton 2010

Lesson Goals:

  • Students can skip count by twos.
  • Students can skip count by 10s.

Lesson Plan Materials

See this idea and more ideas in detail in McKinney and Hinton 2010 p. 22.

Common Core State Standards this Lesson Supports

  • CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.1 Count to 100 by ones and by tens.
  • CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.2 Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.
  • CCSS.Math.Content.1.OA.C.5 Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting on 2 to add 2).

AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner

  • AASL 2.1.3 Use strategies to draw conclusions from information and apply knowledge to curricular areas, real-world situations, and further investigations.

Strange Bedfellows: Integrating Mathematics into Library Instruction

meeraLeave a comment

Maxwell, D. Jackson, and Robyn F. Maxwell. 2013. “Strange Bedfellows: Integrating Mathematics into Library Instruction.” Library Media Connection 32 (1): 22–23.

According to the authors, the Common Core State Standards “encourage questioning techniques that draw out the ‘why’.” Plus, the CCSS also emphasizes reading informational texts. The authors suggest that librarians can integrate math into the library by asking “library-related, practically formulated math-based questions.” An example would be to have students locate the copyright date and calculate how old the book is. This is more than just asking them a word problem for the sake of it; as a librarian, you could then discuss whether it would be important to find a more recent book, or discuss what life was like when the author wrote the book. This strategy is the most economical because it can be done with any book. Another “free” approach is to teach math while teaching library skills (such as by showing how decimals work with finding a book on shelves organized by the Dewey Decimal System). They also offer suggestions for adding math related books to the collection, particularly books that cut across disciplines and biographies of mathematicians. They end with about 25 suggested math related books, broken into three categories: Primary (K-2), Intermediate (3-6) and Secondary (7-12).

Opening the Door for Mathematics Collaboration

meeraLeave a comment

Vandenbroek, Alicia. 2014. “Opening the Door for Mathematics Collaboration.” Library Media Connection 32 (6): 26–27.

 

In place of concrete examples of collaboration, the author (a middle school librarian) points out that the level of collaboration between teachers and the librarian will be different at each school, and suggests starting with a small project rather than a large one. Vandenbroek offers a three part process: demonstrate how you are a resource, then show how you are a partner, and then collaborate. She suggests ways to demonstrate how you are a resource: teach lesson plans that incorporate math vocabulary, collect and share math and logic games in the library, and make a math bibliography. In my experience, this outlook is a realistic and helpful approach. Many teachers will be resistant to “collaboration” (as this does take time on their part, and they are very busy), but will welcome a librarian as a resource. From there, some teachers will see how helpful the librarian is and will be willing to collaborate.

Science-Related Topics in School Library Media Periodicals: An Analysis of Electronic Citation Content from 1998-2004

meeraLeave a comment

Mardis, Marcia A. 2006. “Science-Related Topics in School Library Media Periodicals: An Analysis of Electronic Citation Content from 1998-2004.” School Libraries Worldwide 12 (2): 1–15.

The author, a professor of Library and Information Science at Wayne State University, performed a content analysis of professional articles for school librarians, looking for how many articles addressed librarians supporting science curriculum. Mardis followed this general methodology: select databases with public access, select popular journals for the field, then choose search phrases, and compare results. Mardis specifically tried to answer four questions:

  1. What portion of the school library literature citations refers to articles on science topics?
  2. How has the distribution and type of citations changed during the scope of this study?
  3. What types of articles are being published about science in school library literature, and how long are the articles?
  4. What type of school library media roles and activities for science does the literature support?

Another researcher could perform a similar content analysis for other subjects. Like science, mathematics is not typically a subject that librarians are confident in. A content analysis reveals not just trends in teaching science in the library, it would help a scholar identify gaps in literature and patterns that may make it easier to write a publishable paper.  One factor I am interested in comparing is the length of the articles. I have found several one or two page articles about strategies for using math in the library, but far fewer academic papers or in-depth papers.

Related Readings:

  • Mardis, Marcia. 2007. “School Libraries and Science Achievement: A View from Michigan’s Middle Schools.” School Library Media Research 10 (January).
  • Mardis, Marcia, and Ellen Hoffman. 2007. “Collection and Collaboration: Science in Michigan Middle School Media Centers.” School Library Media Research 10 (January).

Displaying Information (series)

meeraLeave a comment

The Displaying Information series includes four titles:

  • Diagrams, Diagrams, Diagrams! 978-1476533377
  • Graphs, Graphs, Graphs! 978-1-4675-0259-5
  • Maps, Maps, Maps! 978-1-4675-0262-5
  • Timelines, Timelines, Timelines! 978-1-4675-0261-8

All books are written by Kelly Boswell, published in 2013, for grades K-2, by A+ Books (Capstone Press).

Recommender Valerie Byrd Fort is a teacher librarian in an elementary school in South Carolina. She writes that the series explains “different ways to display information in data,” with examples that are kid-friendly. She adds that the series provides ideas for teachers to use the books to support Common Core State Standards. Listed as “recommended” in Library Media Connection, August/September 2014.

Note: Library Media Connection’s book reviews always include books in the Mathematics section; the LMC scale goes up to “highly recommended” and includes “not recommended.”

Let’s Make Graphs (series)

meeraLeave a comment

The Let’s Make Graphs series includes:

  • Bar Graphs 978-1-62431-390-5
  • Graphing Story Problems 978-1-62431-391-2
  • Line Graphs 978-1-62431-392-9
  • Pictographs 978-1-62431-393-6
  • Pie Graphs 978-1-62431-394-3
  • Tally Charts 978-1-62431-395-0

All are published in 2014, for grades K-3, by Cherry Lake Publishing. Available in e-book format also.

Recommender Lynn Van Auken is a teacher librarian from a Massachusetts school. She writes that the series is “thorough and engaging”, entices readers to try making graphs, and clarifies key words. She notes that the series is aligned with the Common Core State Standards. Listed as “recommended” in Library Media Connection, May/June 2014.

Note: Library Media Connection’s book reviews always include books in the Mathematics section; the LMC scale goes up to “highly recommended” and includes “not recommended.”