We are fans of math fiction in this house. This week we read Spaghetti and Meatballs for All, which is a story about a couple hosting a family reunion.
One thing I noticed about math fiction is that it is filled with many layers, which we can't expect a student to absorb all at once. As a result, we read the book several times over many days.
In the first reading, we simply enjoy the story and the pictures. Any reference to "doing" math or even noting numbers will likely be ignored.
During the next reading, we begin to talk about a general sense of the math involved. We comment about the amount of food using words such as "a lot" while we also talk about the other qualities of food (like, it "looks yummy!"). I commented about the solutions proposed by the characters in the book, but SpiderGirl wasn't ready to think about them yet.
We did come back to it in subsequent readings though. Each reading allowed SpiderGirl to think deeper about the problems and solutions posed in the story. She didn't perform any calculations until we had read it through a few times, and when she did, she performed more complex calculations than she has done before.
We haven't returned Spaghetti and Meatballs for All to the library. SpiderGirl isn't done with it yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment