Once Upon a Time... Math

One of the many things I love about teaching in the STEM Lab is helping students make connections across the curriculum. STEM, STEAM, STREAM, whichever acronym you prefer, are all, at their core, about breaking down the walls of the "knowledge zoo" that school sometimes feels like. That is the mindset, unfortunately increasingly prevalent the higher up one goes in the elementary grade levels, that these 90 minutes are for math, not literature, not writing, not science. The next 90 minutes are for another subject in isolation, and so is the next 90, and so on. It is not a realistic model of how anyone uses their learning for an actual purpose. Just about everything everyone does, cooking, assembling furniture, planning a day trip, etc. draws on knowledge from across disciplines that are made for the most part to inhabit lonely cages in a school setting. The STEM Lab is the Serengeti where learning from all subjects roams free.

This rotation in the lab, kindergarten and first grade are being introduced to various math concepts through literature. I have done similar units in years past, but each time the books change, sometimes even from one class to the next. I do my best to avoid the types of contrived stories written by textbook companies. Children can tell the stories are phony and they generally are painfully dull.

I will not launch into a detailed description of each book involved in this unit. I will however share a few of my favorites.

Inch by Inch by Leo Leoni. This one is about a clever inchworm who uses his ability to measure and his wits to avoid being eaten by birds. After reading, the students practice measuring classroom objects with inch tiles and record their data on a table. What I especially love about reading this is that the book also illustrates a number of bird adaptations. We discuss why a flamingo has a long neck and a bill like a shovel and why a hummingbird has such a long and pointy bill.

The King's Commissioners by Aileen Friedman and Susan Guevara. In this book, a king decides that he ought to know how many royal commissioners he has appointed. With some help from the Royal Advisors and the Princess, each employing a different method of skip counting, the total number of commissioners is found. The students are already familiar with the concept of skip counting and know that it is a way of arriving at a total more quickly. What I like about this story is that it illustrates how one handles skip counting when there are "left over" items that are not enough to make another group. When we finish reading, students practice making different sized groups with inch tiles, counting them by the group size, and then adding in the left overs to get the total number.

The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns. This is the story of a triangle who gets tired of doing the "same old things" that a triangle does, namely being roofs for houses, sails for sailboats, supports for bridges, and so on. The triangle decides to visit the Shapeshifter and asks for another side and another angle to make his life "more interesting". The request is granted and, now a quadrilateral, the shape enjoys being books, movie screens, floor tiles, and much more. Eventually though, the shape becomes bored being a quadrilateral, and returns to the Shapeshifter for another side and angle. The pattern continues, the shape is happy for a while as a pentagon, then a hexagon, and on and on, but always goes back to the Shapeshifter for another side and angle, and another, and another. Fortunately, the shape realizes that more sides and angles is not the answer to its dissatisfaction. This book is a great way to introduce students to the concept of shapes being named by the number of sides and angles they have, not by what they look like. The sooner students learn that there is no such shape as a diamond or a house, the better. Following the story, students use pattern blocks to create colorful pictures like those from the book.

I'll stop there, but I really could go on and on. I love this unit so much because of all the math, science, literature, and art that fit so naturally within it.