Links to Literature: Using Representations to Explore Perimeter and Area

Abstract

In an elementary school classroom, as in real life, the lines between the content areas should be blurred, particularly between mathematical problem solving and mathematical situations contextualized in good literature. For that reason, I always look for interesting books about mathematical situations. Why use children's literature to teach mathematics? A good story often places mathematical problems in the context of familiar situations and is similar to, yet a much more elaborate version of, mathematical word problems. Assertions that children's inability to solve word problems results from their inability to read or to compute effectively simply are not true. The problem is that children do not know how to choose the correct operation or sequence of operations to solve the problem. To solve a problem situation presented in words, children need to be able to connect computational processes with appropriate calculations. Their difficulties lie in the fact that children simply do not understand the mathematics well enough conceptually to make the connection with the problem- solving situation. Using books with authentic problem situations may help children see that learning computation serves a real-life purpose.