Math and Literature

I read If You Hopped Like a Frog by David M. Schwartz to my 6th graders. They are learning about ratios and rates and how to solve proportions. It's a beautiful book and beautifully illustrated by James Warhola. At the back of the book, the author has questions you can ask students to work on. I made this worksheet based on that.

If you were as strong as an ANT... you could lift a car!

Even junior high kids still like to be read to. They squeal with delight when I pull out a book— and it does not have to be an illustrated book. Another book I'd read to my 6th graders earlier this year was How Much is a Million? It's also written by Mr. Schwartz and illustrated by Steven Kellogg. We were working with number sense then, and the kids said oohs and aahs as I read to them, "How big is a billion? If a billion kids made a human tower... they would stand up past the moon... If you wanted to count from one to one trillion... it would take you almost 200,000 years."

A great resource that I faithfully use is Math and Literature, Grades 6-8, by Jennifer M. Bay-Williams and Sherri L. Martinie. One suggested reading is A Drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder by Walter Wick. I read this to my students, and afterward, they blew bubbles on their desks and measured the diameter of each burst bubble to find the circumference. We had a lot of fun!