COMPILED BY PATRICIA NEWMAN
When I taught remedial mathematics to students in grades eight to twelve, the most frequent comment I heard from them was, “Why do we have to learn math? I’m never going to use it.”
I always tried to demonstrate how we use mathematics concepts everyday, sometimes without recognizing it. Counting change at the store. Cooking. Cutting a pizza into equal-sized pieces. Sewing. Building and designing. Calculating our gas mileage. Charting the number of steps we take. Music. Finance. Engineering.
The M in STEM
Each of the six lessons below describes a variety of math activities linked to a children’s book by an award-winning author. Your students will practice many of the skills necessary not only for higher-level mathematics, but for daily life as well. These skills include:
- sorting and classifying objects
- finding and making patterns
- measuring
- calculating rate, time and distance was (and why it was vital in WWII)
- practice seeing math in our every day lives
The best part of these six lessons is that the mathematics skills are integrated with rest of the curriculum, and include opporunities for reading, writing, speaking. Additionally, each activity has context and demonstrates the relevance of the M in STEM in science, history, and language arts.
Explore these 6 great mathematics lessons
Book: SEVEN GOLDEN RINGS
Book: BARTALI’S BICYCLE
Book: WHAT’S IN YOUR POCKET?
Book: IF YOU WANT TO KNIT SOME MITTENS
Book: THE ANIMALS WOULD NOT SLEEP!
Book: BRACLETS FOR BINA’S BROTHERS
I post new lessons to LitLinks every week, so please come back for future topics.
If you have an idea for a LitLinks post, share it with me in the comments below.
Click for more LITLINKS STEM + Literacy activities
Featured image: Girl Child Education by Bindaas Madhavi
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