101 Books to Read Before You Grow Up

Bianca Schulze

Australian Curriculum:  Description

101 Books to Read Before You Grow Up is a fun handbook for book lovers and their families to read, check off, and give their own book reviews. 101 Books to Read Before You Grow Up provides a comprehensive list of kid-friendly books for children to read before they grow up. This must-read review list acts as an interactive journal where kids can document the books they read, why they like them, and how they rate them. Divided into sections by subject, from fairy tales and fantasy to sports and more

Teaching ideas

On the Train: A shine-a-light book

Carron Brown and Bee Johnson

Australian Curriculum:  Description

The story looks deeply into all areas of a train, from the drivers cab and engineers to the stop-and-go signals and the passengers that travel on board. This interactive book has children shine-a-light behind pages to reveal hidden secrets.

Teaching ideas
Other activities involving using information to make simple inferences. Ordering and sequencing events.

What’s faster than a speeding Cheetah?

Robert E. Wells

Australian Curriculum:  Description

This book explores the concept of speed. Different animals, objects and concepts are benchmarked against one another to develop an understanding of speed.

Teaching ideas
Used for a unit starter. Many fertile questions can be derived from this book, e.g. what's faster than a speeding cheetah? Junior secondary could use this book to explore converting abstract units MPR to km/h

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

Adam Spencer’s Mind-Boggling Maths, Outrageous Puzzles, Enormous Super-Cool Games Book of Numbers and heaps of other fun stuff!

Adam Spencer

Australian Curriculum:  Description

Prep-Sort, describe and name familiar two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional objects in the environment (ACMMG009); YR1-Recognise and classify familiar two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional objects using obvious features (ACMMG022); YR2-Describe the features of three-dimensional objects (ACMMG043); YR3-Identify symmetry in the environment (ACMMG066); YR4-Investigate number sequences involving multiples of 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 (ACMNA074); YR5-Use efficient mental and written strategies and apply appropriate digital technologies to solve problems (ACMNA291); YR6-Construct simple prisms and pyramids (ACMMG140); YR7-Draw different views of prisms and solids formed from combinations of prisms (ACMMG161); YR8-Solve a range of problems involving rates and ratios, with and without digital technologies (ACMNA188); YR9-Express numbers in scientific notation (ACMNA210)

Teaching ideas
Real-world application in this book. Cross-curricular links are strong too, science, humanities, music, HPE etc

Where is the Green Sheep?

Mem Fox

Australian Curriculum:  Description

Sort and classify familiar objects and explain the basis for these classifications. Copy, continue and create patterns with objects and drawings (ACMNA005); 1-Investigate and describe number patterns formed by skip-counting and patterns with objects (ACMNA018)

Teaching ideas
Subitising small numbers, patterns

Grandfather Tang’s Story: A tale told with tangrams

Ann Tompert

Australian Curriculum:  Description

ACMMG009; ACMMG010; ACMMG022; ACMMG042; ACMMG064; ACMMG088; ACMMG089; ACMMG091; ACMMG112; ACMMG113; ACMMG141; ACMMG142; ACMMG165; ACMMG166

Teaching ideas
Constructing tangrams, barrier games, jigsaws, tangram teasers, exploring triangles, oblongs, parallelograms, trapeziums, areas, polygons, hexagons, angles

Mirror

Jeannie Baker

Australian Curriculum:  Description

Sort and classify familiar objects and explain the basis for these classifications. Copy, continue and create patterns with objects and drawings (ACMNA005); Investigate and describe number patterns formed by skip-counting and patterns with objects (ACMNA018)

Teaching ideas
Other activities that involve recognising patterns of objects.

17 Kings and 42 Elephants

Margaret Mahy

Australian Curriculum:  Description

Subitise small collections of objects (ACMNA003)

Teaching ideas
Counting on with and without distractors in routine and non-routine environments