One of the main things I wonder about when I take classes wherein we discuss the importance of reading in every subject, is how can I do this in math? What books can I read to my students? Are there books I can read to my students which I don't have make large intellectual stretches to connect to mathematics? Can I read excerpts of books in which characters use math? Has this been done before successfully, to the point where I as a new teacher can give a good rationale to my Principal for why I have decided to instruct in this way before the lesson is taught?
Occasionally I have searched for possibilities on the internet, in hopes of finding resources for teachers like me. As it turns out, there are plenty of resources out there to aid math teachers who want to incorporate reading and promote literacy in their instruction. For elementary teachers, there is a plethora of literature dedicated to piquing students' interest in mathematics, and there are pre-written lesson plans attached to these books. For secondary teachers, there are fewer guides for this strategy.
For me specifically, creating lessons that incorporate read-alouds that are easily connected to middle school math concepts has always caused me a bit of anxiety. It would be quite a bit more effort on my part, first of all to find a book that somewhat fits the subject matter, and second of all to create a lesson using that book. To me, Elementary teachers have it much easier in that "fun" math books are much more easily found with a simple google search, and also that plenty of lessons including these books are found usually just as easily.
This time, I made my search a little more in-depth. I scrolled though more results, and I changed my search terms a few times. After a while of searching, I finally came up with the following resources which I felt would be helpful to me as a teacher:
Book Lists:
1. 10 Living Books for Middle School Math
This blog post not only discusses books that can be related to middle school math, but also HOW and even provides some possible lesson plans. The books on this list are wonderful choices, both due to them mainly meeting the appropriate grade level, and also due to the cultural diversity present within these selections.
2. Let's Read Math: Middle School Mathematics Literature
This is an extremely long list of books that can be used in the middle school math classroom, and for what topics. The chart provided gives links to webpages which are supposed to explain each lesson further, but each link seems to just redirect back to the website's home page. Still, it is a great resource. I did look through some of the books listed on this website and found that while some of them were wonderful choices for the subject matter, others felt inappropriate both for the subject and the grade level.
3. Teaching with Trade Books- Math
This blog post first offers a rationale for using books in the mathematics classroom, and then lists both possible book lessons and resources for teachers to use in the classroom. This blogger in particular also updated the post so that now-dead links are shown with a strike through them.
Articles and Exerpts:
1. Math and Literature: A Match Made in the Classroom!
This article discusses more reasons to use literature in the math classroom, at all levels. There are no resources offered specifically but the writer makes some good points on the benefits and importance of using literature to teach math.
2. Reading in the Mathematics Classroom
This is actually an excerpt from a mathematics textbook which is a guide in teaching math literacy(the language of math). In this excerpt, the author focuses more on the natural appearances of texts in the math classroom(textbooks, word problems, etc) and discusses teaching students strategies specifically to help them understand the kind of literature they interact with regularly in the math classroom.
Other resources:
1. Reddit
Specifically, the subreddits r/teachingresources, r/matheducation, and r/Teachers contain useful resources. If I am looking for something specific, I can write a post asking other teachers for resources. Or, I can search for what I am looking for in the search bar within the relevant subreddits.
Notes for future study:
There were a couple of items that I noticed showed up quite a bit in book lists for math education: two books, Holes and Gulliver's Travels. I have not read Gulliver's Travels, but I have read Holes and was continuously surprised to see it on these lists because I did not recall there being very much in the way of mathematics concepts in the story. After seeing it come up so often, though, I am prompted to now reread Holes, and read Gulliver's Travels for the first time, to determine how I can use these books myself.
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