In February, I will give a presentation to pre-service teachers at Stonehill College and Fitchburg State.  They want me to share ideas about the CCSMPs and how my Use Your Math Power books can be used to enhance use of the practices.  I will focus on Practices 1 and 3 and use examples from my books to illustrate what these practices can look like in the classroom and what the teacher does to engage students.

At Fitchburg they also want me to share ideas about using other picture books in math class.   I’m still figuring out which picture books I will share and how.  I am thinking about presenting the Noticing/Wondering approach for working with picture books, where students notice what is happening in the book and develop math questions to investigate.

For example,  using this approach with  The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins, students would discuss how the more friends kept and how the amount of cookies per person kept getting smaller, then come up with math questions they wonder about.  Possible questions that occur to me include:

• What are all the division situations in the book?
• What fraction of the cookies does Victoria get at each step?
• Why didn’t the same number of kids come each time the doorbell rang?
• If the book continued in a similar way, what do you think would happen next?
• How many cookies would grandma need to bring so that everyone could get the amount of cookies Victoria had in the beginning?

I’m curious about whether you’ve used this approach with picture books before and whether you’d suggest any particular picture books to share.  I’d love to hear your thoughts!