Teaching math through picture books:

Stories can come from the teacher, or the students and can be in the shape of:

Many word problems are set up as small stories. With some elaboration and a little bit of intrigue, they can be turned into proper stories. A great example of this is The Adventures of Small Number.

We can incorporate stories through the linear relations unit. An activity that my class (Bri) does is “Bungee Barbie” and we can incorporate a story of Barbie's experience bungee jumping. 

 In my undergraduate class on set theory (David), we taught the mathematical concept of different kinds of infinity using a play that we put on. The script can be viewed here.

We believe that at all levels, students can be engaged to make stories that relate the mathematics of the world around them to the classroom. The storytelling concept is inclusive to all students' learning abilities because it gives students the opportunity to write about their own experiences and can be expressed in the students' preferred method. The chance to express this kind of creativity in math class offers all kinds of cross-curricular connections. 

Chehak Arneja, Dr. Sneha Tyagi. The importance of using stories for teaching-learning of mathematical concepts. Int J Adv Acad Stud 2020;2(4):499-503. DOI: 10.33545/27068919.2020.v2.i4h.445

A great activity would be to have students design their own math story. This open-ended project can be presented in any format: digital book, song, video, or picture book. Students making their own story in their preferred method would promote differentiated and student-centered learning. All learners are able to explore their interests and it is more engaging. An engaging resource that can be used in the classroom for creating story books is called BookCreator. This app is a digital book-making platform with endless tools and features. Students can include various styles of text, images, audio clips, and videos. These wide range of tools help support many students with various learning needs. Most importantly, students learn real-life applications of math. They can see, hear, and manipulate numbers.

Schley, D. R., & Fujita, K. (2014). Seeing the math in the story: on how abstraction promotes performance on mathematical word problems. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(8), 953-961.

Teaching as a story has great benefits. As suggested by Tolen when teaching through story, “it’s not just regurgitating math facts, it requires them to process information differently.” By moving away from traditional math practices, students will have the ability to explore their identity, collaborate with peers and have discussions not normally found in the math class about characters, settings, plots, and much more. Along with these new skills, by incorporating the second element of story telling into math there is the potential for greater student buy in. Finally, storytelling has been used by First Nations peoples for decades. By incorporating storytelling into the classroom a teacher is inadvertently bringing in culture as well. 

Story #1: Finance; choose your own adventure.

Students will be provided with a story that has many twists and turns. At the end of each chapter the student reading, who is the protagonist in their own story, must make a financial decision regarding either an opportunity for savings, a large expense, or an investment opportunity. As there are many outcomes and options to choose from during a choose your own adventure students will be expected to explain certain financial decisions after the adventure ends. The goal is to see which decisions leave students in debt versus who is prepared for their future. The students will justify the decisions they have made during the story to their classmates. 

This could be used as an introduction and conclusion, for use before and after students have been exposed to making informed decisions that will benefit their financial futures. When reading it before, they may not take it as seriously, or may misunderstand the meaning or consequence of certain decisions (which is welcomed). After teaching about budgeting and savings plans students will be asked to re-read the story and see if any of their financial decisions have changed.  

Reference: 

Tolen, M. (2020, September 29). Learning math through story: Examples from one teacher's classroom. Ditch That Textbook. Retrieved May 7, 2022, from https://ditchthattextbook.com/learning-math-through-story/