Wednesday, December 22, 2021

#MTBoSYuleBlog - Spreading the Joy of Reading

 

Something New I Tried - Math Bookshelf

Sometimes I have these ideas that work out super well in my head, but maybe not so much in real-life.  Earlier this summer, I shared about the Puzzle and Play Corner and overall, that is working REALLY well!


It took a while, but overall, I like how this corner turned out.  I have one young man who makes it his mission each week to figure out the puzzle of the week, even getting his work done early so he can work on the puzzle.  Other kiddos beeline over on Mondays to read that week's joke.  Others are quick to pick up a marker and add to the Mental Math board, including some kiddos last week that I don't even have in class!

But the windowsill is still a work in progress.

Right now, it's decorated for the holidays and I love how the "fireplace" turned out, but I know soon it will be time to turn it back over to the math bookshelf and I'm not quite sure how to make my vision work better.

I love to read.  Last year, a friend of mine was working on a math elective class for her school using books and literature related to math to spark math discussions.  I loved this idea and tried to figure out how I could use it in my classroom.

I decided that I could display various math books in the windowsill, hoping that my student readers might be drawn to them.  I know I had never really thought of math related books / novels, so why not?

I started out with some books I had gathered along the way, mostly statistics books, like The Lady Tasting Tea and some children's books, like Sir Cumference and Math Curse, then started scouring used bookstores and eBay looking for other titles that sounded interesting.  I've gotten books such as Math Curse and the Number Devil as well as various puzzle books.  I would eventually like to have enough that I can rotate them out regularly but I don't really know how to market them in a way to spark curiosity in my students.  

Do you have any great book recommendations for my collection?  
Any ideas on how to get students to be interested in the books?



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