It's About Time!

Title: It's About Time!

Author: Stuart J. Murphy

Illustrator: John Speirs

Recommended Grade Level: 1- 2

Common Core Mathematics Standards Addressed: 1.MD.3. Tell and write time in hours using analog and digital clocks.
Summary: This is a short story about the everyday life of a small boy who tells what he does every hour. In the story, the boy can't sleep during the whole night. He spends the night having fun with shadows and monsters until it's time to get up and start another day. The book tells what is happening in one sentence , and shows both digital and analog clock faces.
Rating: ***** I recommend this book because it helps learning to tell the time to the nearest hour and gaining understanding of a elapsed time.

Classroom ideas: This book could be used to explain to the children that a day has 24 hours and introduce to them midnight AM and PM hours as well as midnight and Noon time division.
With this book we can also explain the children the differences between analog and digital clocks. We can have an analog clock as we read the story so the children can move the hands on the clock face to correspond to the times in the story.
As a follow up activity we can make a collage finding pictures in magazines that show different clocks and different times. Children can circle each clock that shows the time on the hour.

The Greedy Triangle - Posted by Alina Jackson

Title: The Greedy Triangle

Author: Marilyn Burns

Illustrator: Gordon Silveria

Recommended Grade Level: K-3

Common Core Mathematics Standards Addressed: Geometry, reason with shapes and their attributes, problem solving.

Summary: This story is about a triangle who isn't happy with his current shape and wants to be a different shape. In the story, the triangle goes to the shapeshifter and makes his first request of adding one more side and one more angle, which turned him into a quadrilateral. As the story continues the triangle is changed to many different shapes.


Rating: ***** I highly recommend this book because it explains how geometry works. It allows students to connect the meanings of shapes by showing examples of how each shape looks in the real world.

Classroom ideas: This book could be used to introduce geometric shapes. Students could use shapes in the classroom to identify some of the shapes from the book. Students could cut out a triangle and then cut out other angles to add to the triangle to form different geometric shapes. You could also ask the students to describe their favorite shape and explain how many sides their shape has and what would their shape turn into if another angle and side were added to it.

Osam Rabadi - EDE 715 6:15pm Book Club

Rooster's Off to See the World

Title: Rooster's off to see the world

Author: Eric Carle

Illustrator: Eric Carle

Recommended Grade Level: Ages 4-8

Common Core Mathematics Standards Addressed: Operations and algebraic thinking, counting & cardinality, number and operations in base ten

Summary: Rooster is lonely and decides that he wants to travel. He decides to set out to see the world. He encounters two cats, three frogs, four turtles, and five fish. When roosters new found friends decide that they are hungry, tired and no longer want to carry on with their adventure, they decide to leave roosters side. First the five fish, then the four turtles, three frogs and two cats, they all leave in this order. Rooster is upset about his friends leaving him, but then remembers that he does have a place to stay. He has a place where he can enjoy a good meal of grain and his very own perch to stay on. Keeping the good memories of his adventure with his new friends, Rooster decides that he did not make a mistake by traveling rather he gained happy memories from his travels.

Rating: (least 1- 5 greatest) ***** This book teaches children the fundamentals of counting, adding, and subtracting. Eric Carle does a wonderful job in both his writing and illustration. He keeps the children engaged in the story by showing off his beautiful illustration. Carle educates children by getting them engaged in the story by having them predict the outcome in the story. I recommend this book to children of ages 3-9.

Classroom Ideas: Create a game with the class using a graph, colored cubes and pictures of the animals in the book. The teacher can use colored cubes to represent the animals in the story. One cube, for instance the red cube, can represent the rooster, the two black cubes can represent the cats, three green cubes can represent the frogs and so on . Have the students take turns pulling out one cube at a time. The students will then mix and match while adding and subtracting the colored cubes to get different outcomes in the story. The students can then see which animals decide to go on the adventure with rooster and which animals leave him behind. This will teach children how to predict, count forwards and backwards and teach them basic math skills.

Little Quack, Ana santapau

Title: Little Quack
Author:Lauren Thompson
Illustrator: Derek Anderson
Recommended Grade Level: PreK -1

Common Core Mathematics Standards Addressed:
-Counting and Cardinality
-Operation and Algebraic Thinking

Summary: This story is about Mama Duck and her five little ducklings, Widdle, Waddle, Piddle, Puddle, and Little Quack. They all lived together in a nice, soft nest. But even Mama's littlest duckling was not so little anymore. It is time to leave the nest and learn to swim and take that first dip in the pond. All the little ducklings are very anxious, especially Little Quack. But one by one, with a lot of encouragement from Mama, they conquer their fear and take the plunge.

Rating:This is one of my favorite books to read to my class. I recommend this book; I give it an A plus. But it's Derek Anderson's exuberant and playful illustrations that really make this picture book a stand-out. Each large, dazzling spread is filled with bold color, marvelous facial expressions, eye-catching detail, and lots of humor, that makes this a perfect selection for story time or a Math lesson.

Classroom Ideas: An inventive Quack-U-Lator running along the bottom of each page therefore, it can be used to introduce counting and addition and subtration. This book can also be integrated to a science lesson on pond or farm animals.

Math for All Seasons. Posted by Charles Glenn

Title: Math for All Seasons

Author: Greg Tang

Illustrator: Harry Briggs

Recommended Grade Level: 1-3

Common Core Mathematics Standards Addressed:

Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication.

• 2.OA.3. Determine whether a group of objects (up to 20) has an odd or even number of members, e.g., by pairing objects or counting them by 2s; write an equation to express an even number as a sum of two equal addends.
• 2.OA.4. Use addition to find the total number of objects arranged in rectangular arrays with up to 5 rows and up to 5 columns; write an equation to express the total as a sum of equal addends.

Summary: This book connects the yearly calendar with countable objects. Throughout the year during season changes and holidays, we find objects relating to each season, and are given the task of counting them. In the spring, we are counting tulips in bloom. In the summer, we are counting scoops of ice cream and dandelions. In the fall, we are counting pumpkins and ears of corn. In the winter, we are counting snowflakes and icicles. There is a pattern with counting each object. Sometimes we find ourselves counting by twos, threes or fives. At times, we are prompted to subtract, to find 0ut how many of each object there is.

Rating:***** I highly recommend this book. It helps to take away from the abstractness of numbers. It helps to give reasons to why we multiply. If we are able to multiply, we can collect data and count more efficiently.

Classroom Ideas: This can be an introduction to how we use math for data collection. We can also use this when we learn mathematics equations where multiple equations are used. If there are two rows of four pumpkins, and all have faces except for two, we can quickly multiply and subtract two. It gives meaning of (4x2)-2, beyond the numbers. Students are constantly seeking the relevance of their learning. Being able to make a connection with what they are learning, makes it interesting.

More or Less, Kristina Sica

Title: More or LEss

Author: Stuart J. Murphy

Illustrator: David T. Wenzel

Recommended Grade Level: K-1


Common Core Mathematics Standards Addressed: Prediction, Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Logic, Number and Operations in Base Ten, Comparing

Summary: This story is about a boy named Eddie who is working the dunk tank at his school fair for the principal's retirement celebration. Eddie has a booth, guessing people's ages. If Eddie guesses the persons age in 3 questions or less, Eddie wins, four questions or more, you get a prize, and if it takes Eddie more than six questions, Eddie get's dunked! By using clues, such as the sound of the players voice, he then assumes the general age (child, adult, senior citizen) and from there begins asking the player various questions to guess their age.

Rating: **** I highly recommend this book and think students will enjoy it as well. I think it teaches useful concepts while incorporating them into a fun and relatable story.

Classroom Ideas: These concepts could be used in the classroom by having the students predict the next question Eddie will ask before reading on, or reading the story a second time and have the students come up with different questions that Eddie could ask in the story. This will help demonstrate the relationship between the question and answer and how important it is to ask the right questions.

Round Is a Mooncake, posted by Lynne Torrey

Title: Round is a Mooncake

Author: Rosanne Thong

Illustrator: Grace Lin

Recommended Grade Level: PreK, K, 1 and 2

Common Core Mathematics Standards Addressed: Geometry, Counting and Cardinality

Summary: This is a wonderful, reflective story that focuses on shapes. From the young Chinese-American girl's point of view, we are taken on a journey through ordinary daily life and around every corner, circles, squares and rectangles appear. The shapes are found in objects of her life and subtly, through the rhyming verse style of the story we learn how these sometimes Chinese, sometimes American objects are meaningful to her. The book is beautifully illustrated with big colorful shapes and stylistic patterns. The author also engages the readers by inviting them to see if they, too, can find shapes within the imagery.

Rating: ***** I highly recommend and think your students will enjoy it too. It includes many universal concepts that readers will connect with.

Classroom Ideas: This book is full of inspirational material for young students. Scientifically, students can practice observation while counting shapes on the page. Students can also practice prediction as unfamiliar objects present themselves and students make guesses based on the context as to what these objects might be used for. Culturally, the Chinese, customs, art, food and more are presented and may be use as inspiration to compare cultural similarities and differences. Mathematically speaking, children will learn about shapes. By using manipulatives in the classroom like blocks, felt board, computer, geoboard children can begin to recognize, name and identify 2 and 3 dimensional shapes. Playing with 2-dimensional shapes will help to develop relational terms as "above", "below" and "next to". Older students may want to create patterns with the shapes. Creatively, the students may want to pick one shape idea in the story, and write about or paint a picture with the same shape, to express where they find it in their own lives.