Recommended Books

Poke-a-Dot: An Alphabet Eye Spy

Ikids

Australian Curriculum:  Description

Foundation Year – Establish understanding of the language and processes of counting by naming numbers in sequences, initially to and from 20, moving from  any starting point (ACMNA001)

Teaching ideas

Poke-a-Dot:Who’s in the Ocean?

Sara Russell

Australian Curriculum:  Description

Foundation Year – Establish understanding of the language and processes of counting by naming numbers in sequences, initially to and from 20, moving from  any starting point (ACMNA001)

Teaching ideas

Poke-a-Dot: 10 Little Monkeys

Lucy Schultz

Australian Curriculum:  Description

Foundation Year – Establish understanding of the language and processes of counting by naming numbers in sequences, initially to and from 20, moving from  any starting point (ACMNA001)

Teaching ideas

Poke-a-Dot: Old MacDonald’s Farm

Travis King

Australian Curriculum:  Description

Foundation Year – Establish understanding of the language and processes of counting by naming numbers in sequences, initially to and from 20, moving from  any starting point (ACMNA001)

Teaching ideas

Mathterpieces: The Art of Problem-Solving

Greg Tang

Australian Curriculum:  Description

Foundation Year – Subitise small collections of objects (ACMNA003);
Year 1 – Represent and solve simple addition and subtraction problems using a range of strategies including counting on, partitioning, and rearranging parts (ACMNA015);
Year 2 – Describe, continue, and create number patterns resulting from performing addition or subtraction (ACMNA035).

Teaching ideas
Students investigate other situations involving subitising and counting on with and without distractors in routine and non-routine situations. Students could write the number sentences represented by art in this book (representational to abstract).

Give Me Half!

Stuart J. Murphy

Australian Curriculum:  Description

This story is about a brother and sister who are asked to share all their food and drink; pizza, cupcakes, drink etc

Teaching ideas
(1) Read the story and describe what's going on in each picture; (2) vocabulary-half, whole, share, divide, divided equally; (3) gather materials (objects, quantities and collections) and discuss how you would halve them; (4) draw pictures of objects in your classroom, and lines to show 'half'

Math for All Seasons

Greg Tang

Australian Curriculum:  Description

This book explores counting up collections of items and objects. The book encourages seeing patterns to make the counting quicker than one-by-one.

Teaching ideas
(1) Prep students can count the objects in the collections within this book; (2) years 1-3 students can be encouraged to 'see the pattern' to help them partition to count up the objects in the quantities quicker; (3) Final pages of the book show the answers using numbers and symbols as well as circles drawn around the collection, year 2s and 3s should be encouraged to set their work out using numbers and symbols

The Great Divide: A mathematical marathon

Dayle Ann Dodds

Australian Curriculum:  Description

This book contextualises division using a cycling marathon. Students can mentally calculate how many racers are left after each mishap then check as they turn the pages.

Teaching ideas
(1) Have students develop their own context/idea/story for division, have them see if their elbow partner can mentally calculate the correct answer; (2) Have students use numbers and symbols to represent the number sentences in the story

How Much, How Many, How Far, How Heavy, How Long, How Tall is 1000?

Helen Nolan

Australian Curriculum:  Description

This book gives a huge variety of contexts to the number one thousand. As the title describes, they explore collections, quantities, distances, weight, length and height as the children in the story try to understand how ‘big’ one thousand really is.

Teaching ideas
(1) Lots and lots of hands-on experience helps students understand large numbers. Use pasta, coins, beads, counters, other manipulatives; (2) using technology students could do a line of 25 'o', then copy and paste it four times to show an array of 100; (3) wrapping paper and patterned fabrics can be used to circle collections too.

Alex’s Adventures in Numberland

Alex Bellos

Australian Curriculum:  Description

A book “reclaiming maths from the geeks”. The author explores the mathematical ideas that underpin almost every facet of our lives. He travels the world meeting the fastest human calculators and a numerate chimpanzee in Japan. Snippets of amazing mathematics in the real world and proofs that will have you rapt.

Teaching ideas
Hooks for lessons. Introduction to new topics. Interesting 'starters' for lessons. Ideas to showcase mathematics or numeracy at subject evenings, open days, learning fairs etc.