Title: Math Curse
Author: Jon Sceiszka
Illustrator: Lane Smith
Date of Publication: 1995
Number of pages: 29
Genre: Realistic Fiction (Humorous Stories)
Recommended Grade Level: 4-6
Estimated time for read aloud and activity: 1 hour

Math Curse walks us through a school aged girls day as she discovers that she is surrounded by math problems. Her teacher tells her that "you can think of almost everything as a math problem," causing her to look at everyday situations like time, getting dressed, amount of milk in her cereal and how many flakes in her bowl. Each encounter she has results in a math problem.

Students will explore and discover math elements in the reading as well as in their own lives.  They will create math story problems.  

Strand 3: Comprehending Informational Text
Concept 2 Functional Text:  Identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the purpose, structures, clarity and relevancy of functional text.
PO 2: Locate details from functional text for a specific purpose. (eg. To follow directions, to solve problems, to perform procedures, to answer questions.)

Math Curse
Manipulatives of pizza, pie, clock, desks.
Worksheets
Pencils

If you did not come to school, would you ever do math?  If yes, when?  If no, why?
What do you think a math curse is?

• Now do you think you would do math if you did not come to school?
• Give me examples of math that you used this morning, before school. (Teacher give the first example) (Application)
• How else does math affect your lives?  What about your parents? (Analysis)
• How does this book compare to your math book?  Similarities, differences? (Analysis)
• What is the difference between math at home, and math at school? (Analysis)
• How did the character in this story break her math curse? (Comprehension)   </FONT>

NOTE:  Many of my questions are application and analysis.  The nature of the book is one that lends itself to these types of questions, rather than the synthesis or evaluation.  This is literature with math problems in it.

This was a fun lesson to prepare because the options are unlimited with the book.  I chose three lessons from the book and had the children work in groups.  I allowed them to work with a partner on one lesson and then switch partners for the next lesson.  They really did a pretty nice job of following directions and staying on task.  

In the future, I will take more time to allow the students to work with the manipulatives.  I will extend this lesson to cover as many days as I have prepared lessons.  I will have the children work on the same lesson in each group.  This way, I can review it and check their work.  This time, I was unable to go over the work with them because we ran out of time and they all did all of the lessons.  I walked around and helped each group, but it would have been more affective for them all to be working on the same lesson.  I will also not allow the students to switch groups.  This proved to be confusing because we were asking them to choose a partner they had not worked with, and go to an activity they had not completed.