-How Much Is a Million?
By David M. Schwartz pictures by Steven Kellogg
-Recommended for grades 2-5
-NCTM Content Standards: Number & Operations, Measurement
-Summary:
This book helps readers conceptualize the magnitude of large numbers. The main character, Marvelosissimo the Mathematical Magician, leads the reader through several examples of what a large quantity, for example one million, of something might look like. To illustrate how large one million is, Marvelosissimo describes how big a container would have to be to house one million goldfish, or how high one million children stacked on one another’s shoulders would stretch to.
-Recommended Uses/ Activities:
This book could be used to introduce a unit on measurement. After reading the book, students could measure each other’s heights and add them together, figuring out how far the students in the classroom if stacked upon one another’s shoulders would stretch to, or how big the city harbor/ lake might be. Furthermore, the students could find the average foot size of the classroom and find how far one million human feet might stretch.
To practice estimation, previous to reading the book, the teacher could ask the children to estimate the magnitudes of certain measurements that will be discussed in the book. After reading the teacher could lead a discussion on how their estimations compared with the book.
(I also used this book for book club)
ReplyDeleteTo go along with Annie's great recommended uses/activities, here is another way one could use this book in math class:
The pages with just stars could be used as a continuous array activity where students can practice finding the areas of squares and rectangles by using the stars. The teacher could enlarge the page so it would be easier for the students to count the stars. If students finish their in-class math work early, then they contribute in finding the entire area of the stars (the area of the page).
A visual representation of the page would look something like this:
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This pattern would continue until the whole page is full of stars.
The activity would incorporate the NCTM standard of geometry and is suitable for students in grades 3-5.