Sure, you can curl up with a child and a Mathical book in your lap, but sometimes it helps to have ideas for how to approach the math & reading in the book, especially with a group of kids!
Reading Guides We Love
We are grateful to DREME and First Book for collaborating with us to produce more than two dozen beautiful & useful storybook guides:
DREME & First Book Mathical storybook guides:
But we’re not alone!
There are many more mathy books out there, and a few special groups are doing amazing work creating storybook guides for them.
Whether or not they are Mathical, the books these groups select may be of interest. We appreciate our colleagues who are doing notable work in the area of children’s math & literacy:
California Early Math Project: https://www.earlymathca.org/childrens-literature
DREME Family Math – Reading Together: https://familymath.stanford.edu/activities/reading-together/
Erikson Early Math Learning: https://earlymath.erikson.edu/series/book-ideas/
Storytelling Math series:
- https://www.charlesbridge.com/pages/storytelling-math-series
- https://www.charlesbridge.com/pages/storytelling-math-activities
Gotta Love a Good Guide…
Here are some qualities of a stand-out guide (or collection of reading guides!):
- Enjoyable. Do the children in my care feel welcome & encouraged to learn more? Would my kids have fun with these books & guides?
- Eye-Opening. Am I learning new things? Are ideas & connections being sparked?
- Relatable. Do I see myself / my students represented? Do the activities look appealing?
- Searchable / Browsable. Can I look for my students’ age or reading level? Can I find something seasonal, or to fit a math concept? How can I sort this collection?
- Above & Beyond. What else is offered? Maybe it’s a vocabulary list. Maybe it’s links to teaching standards in language arts & mathematics.
- Trustworthy. Who produced these guides? Was there someone with teaching expertise in both language arts & math involved?
- Accessible. We love to recommend guides that are easy to read on the web for those who are differently abled. We also love guides that have been translated into multiple languages for ELL students & teachers.
These are some of the things we look for when recommending storybook guides to you, or when creating them!
Feel free to let us know if you come across additional collections of mathy storybooks and storybook guides you admire; you can reach out to Kirsten Bohl at mathical@slmath.org.