Big Dreams for Common Core

Cat & Fiddlers,  you can imagine my delight about the new Common Core curriculum, with its emphasis on nonfiction in the classroom.

I read in the Pasadena Star News that my local school district will be implementing the changes:

Reading and writing will be integrated, instead of being treated as
separate subjects, and also will be incorporated into math lessons.

And kindergartners will be solving word problems, "the bane of math students everywhere."

A bane? When I started this blog, I wrote several posts about how to create entertaining, high interest word problems. Perhaps, with Common Core, there will be a stylistic renaissance in their style and content. A girl can dream.

Speaking of word problems, Tyrannosaurus Math has been published by Fukuinkan Shoten in Japan!

Math Stories

For Non-Fiction Monday, one last nod to William Steig (on the last day of his honorary month) in the form of a math lesson:

Read Amos and Boris. (Enjoy!)

Make a list of what Amos loaded on the ship: cheese, biscuits, acorns, honey, wheat germ, two barrels of fresh water, a compass, a sextant, a telescope, a saw, a hammer, nails, a needle and thread, bandages, iodine, a yoyo and playing cards.

How many items were food/drink? How many were tools (both for navigation and repair)? How many were for first aid? For play? How many total?

(One could do this lesson, for example, in conjunction with the Open Court Literacy Program’s Grade 1 story on Captain Bill Pinkney’s Journey. Fiction, math and social studies, in one coup.)

A fantasy story with math potential…makes me think of :

DIY Fantasy Word Problems

1.    Pick a fantasy character (princess, superhero, alien. I’ll pick the princess)

2.    Brainstorm people or things that would be in their setting.
(fancy ball, prince, knight, dragon, castle. I’ll pick the ball)

3.    Brainstorm activities that character might be involved in. What would be fun? What would be dangerous?
(Getting rescued, getting dressed up, picking a prince. I’ll pick “getting dressed up”)

4.    Brainstorm how math could be involved in that activity.
(Counting jewels. Going shopping. Measuring cloth for a gown. I’ll pick “going shopping”)

Here’s a simple word problem:

A king gave the princess $500 for her outfit to wear to the ball. She picked out a gown that cost $80, a ruby necklace that cost $100, a diamond ring that cost $300, and a pair of satin slippers that were $70. Will she have enough money to buy her outfit?

Draw a picture.  Customized high interest subject + word problems = fun!

Here we are having fun at the CSLA conference last weekend in Ontario. You can't see any copies of Tyrannosaurus Math because they were sold out! Librarians rock.

Poetry Friday 2009: Halloween Word Problems

To celebrate the occasion, The Cat and The Fiddle recommends a Halloween word problem:

A mother spider told her twins
Beneath a dusky sky,
“I’ll take you out to trick or treat,
You’ll dress as octopi!”
She basted silk from spinnerets
Each stitch was close and small
And wove two teeny purple suits-
how many legs in all?

Holidays are naturals for word problems, and Halloween is probably the richest source for subject matter.

DIY (Do It Yourself) Halloween Word Problems.

1. Read some Halloween picture books with lots of characters.

2. Brainstorm subjects (ghosts, mummies and all the usual suspects) and/or items in their setting (coffins, tombstones etc.) for the word problems.

3. For mathematical action, creatures can go to, or leave, parties/cemeteries/haunted houses (addition and subtraction). They can scare, haunt, fly over things, etc. Groups can be used for multiplication or division. If a mummy needs 12 yards of bandages, how many yards do four mummies need? If three vampires share a bag that has 18 candy eyeballs, how many eyes will they each get? I could go on and on. It’s just too much fun.

4. Draw the picture and decorate your house with it!

Word Problems With Bite

I wrote Tyrannosaurus Math (reviewed this week at Miss Rhumpius) before discovering Susan Gerofsky’s A Man Left Albuquerque Heading East, (mentioned in an earlier post). But it confirmed what I already knew: kids crave word problems with appealing imagery.

As part of her research Gerofsky asked a group of 5th and 6th graders to discuss three similar story problems in which Mike, Susanne or Sandra put some tomatoes, plums and apples into a number of bags or cartons.

“It would be better if it was about rocket blasters,” one child said.
“You’d have a better question, like if it’s candy,” said another. Sometimes you think of that when you solve a problem. Then when you go home you want to have candy. So your mouth just makes you do the question.”

Publishers of math books for the young get it. A search for “counting books” on Amazon turns up books with chocolate, icky bugs, crocodiles, fairy tale characters and more. Why shouldn’t older children get equal treatment? Why not serve them word problems with high interest topics?

In honor of Poetry Friday:

Max came upon five wild beasts,
They had fur, and scales and feathers,
Two terrible eyes shone from each,
How many eyes all together?

In my next post, a lesson on getting children to write their own jazzy word problems. Let the rumpus begin!

Word Problems- A Bit of History

Now that the kids are back in school, The Cat and the Fiddle would like to dish out some thoughts about word problems.

When doing research for a historical project some time ago I stumbled across this one, dating from 1581:

“A drunkard drinketh a barrel of beer in the space of 14 days, and when his wife drinks with him then they drink it out within ten days. In what space will his wife drink that barrel alone?”

(from Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London by Liza Picard)

Hopefully the scholars were sober whilst they tried to figure it out. Eager to know more math history, I read Susan Gerofsky’s fascinating A Man Left Albuquerque Heading East: Word Problems as Genre in Mathematics and learned that word problems are as old as the earliest human records (they show up on 4000 year old Babylonian cuneiform tablets) and have been employed continuously ever since. Some of the old chestnuts are even included, with alterations, in textbooks today. An Italian Renaissance math textbook contains an early version of the “two trains crossing” problem, using couriers dispatched from both the Holy Father in Rome and a certain Signora of Venice.

In her book Gerofsky analyzes and critiques word problems and makes recommendations for how to improve them. Hallelujah! Gary Larson spoke for most of us with his legendary cartoon that depicts a library in hell stocked with books like "Story Problems Galore.” Why did we dread them when we were in school? For their often preposterous scenarios. For their two dimensional characters. Who really cared about the number of fabric squares Jane needed for her quilt, or the length of the shadows cast by those flagpoles? Nobody did. Everyone knew word problems were cheap instructional set-ups, math not even thinly disguised as story.

Why is this my business? Because I’ve worked, as a substitute teacher, with hundreds of students in elementary classrooms. I’ve felt their pain. And I say, along with Gerofsky, that word problems don’t have to be lifeless. We can do better. Together, we can build exciting story problems for tomorrow’s children. Or at least we can have fun with them on this blog.



As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats.
Each cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks and wives,
how many were there going to St. Ives?





Elsewhere, in Tyrannosaurus related news: "Fossil Identified as mini-T-rex" What a story! Anastasia Suen featured Tyrannosaurus Math as a Picture Book of the Day, and it's now part of the 2010 California Collection by California Readers. Roar!