Mathematics can be a very challenging topic to teach, especially to young children. According to the article Mathematical Concepts Come Alive in Pre-K and Kindergarten Classrooms, teachers should use literature to help students understand the concepts of mathematics. "The concrete, real-life experiences described in literature motivate students to think and reason mathematically" (Huber and Lenhoff, 226). Younger students do not realize that they will be using math in their everyday lives, and it can frustrate them as to, "why are we learning this?". In a curriculum reading literature about mathematics will help younger children see that math is part of their everyday lives and that they will be using it everyday. An example from the article that shows that literature does help students in mathematics is about two young boys who were read a book about buttons and classifying then. After the book was read they were asked to classify the buttons in groups that "are the same". They both put classified the buttons into different groups based on similarities.
Children learn by being engaged in what they are learning about. Literature helps with this as well. Through research it has been proved that mathematical literature does help students learn mathematics and the concepts. Literature should always be paired with hands on manipulatives as well in a mathematics curriculum, for example how the boys were given buttons to sort after they were read a book about buttons. As a teacher, you want to guide your students through the learning process, not just give them the answers. By guiding them, the students can see how do a problem, and remember how to do it.
Through reading this article I realized that Literature is an excellent way to get your students engaged and interested in mathematics. Through reading literature about mathematics in your curriculum students will be able to see how they will be, and have been, using math in their everyday lives. I also was not aware of all the different types of math literature that there were as well. This article gave many book titles and explained how they used them in the classroom.
Huber, L. L. and Lenhoff, R. S. (2006). Mathematical concepts come alive in pre-K and kindergarten classrooms. Teaching Children Mathematics 13(4), 226-231.
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