Mathematizing Children's Literature by Allison Hintz

Author:Allison Hintz
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781625311597
Publisher: Stenhouse Publishers
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Read-Alouds: What Order and Why?

There is not a fixed order for focused read-alouds. You might choose to follow an Open Notice and Wonder with a Story Explore and then a Math Lens read, or vice versa. The order of the reads is flexible and depends on what will best support students’ thinking about the literary and mathematics you, and they, want to study. For example, engaging students in a Story Explore read before a Math Lens read often allows students to delve more deeply into the story context. And specifically, if the comprehension strategy of prediction is your focus, you’ll want to have the Story Explore read first so that students can discuss and predict story events as they unfold for the first time!

You’ll notice that the order of the vignettes in this chapter is Open Notice and Wonder, into a Story Explore, and finally a Math Lens. Our experiences using Last Stop on Market Street and The Lion’s Share with students and teachers taught us that it was powerful to read these stories in this order. Beginning with an Open Notice and Wonder read got our community into the story; following that with a Story Explore read and discussions took us further within the story context and allowed us to think as mathematicians deeply within the context. But we want to be clear that other sequences work equally well for different books and areas of focus. We encourage you to play with order and see what you learn!

Here are a couple of examples of books that we might explore using a different focused-read order. Square Cat, the book about Eula the cat that wants to be round and is sad to be square, has a plot twist near the end. This twist lends itself to a focus on predicting story events, so we would introduce Square Cat with a Story Explore focused read first. We would likely do an Open Notice and Wonder read second, to provide an opportunity for students to identify story details and pose questions about Eula the cat, her features, why she is upset, and how her friends try to help her. We would focus on a Math Lens read third, as Eula the cat’s problems relate directly to the properties of a square; this read would build on the first two reads to look deeply at shapes and how their properties and characteristics impact the world around them.

The Most Magnificent Thing, the tale of the girl determined to build a creation she has imagined clearly in her mind, is a story of engineering that centers the mathematical practice of perseverance. With this story we might focus first on perseverance through a Math Lens read, helping students see what it looks like to be within a state of struggle and how a mathematician persists through an iterative cycle as she revises her ideas. We might then facilitate an Open Notice and Wonder read to see what else students might think about, from the girl’s feelings

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