Picture Book Month

 The month of November celebrates picture books! Seems like a weird concept, right? Why celebrate picture books? Most of the time, these books seems like just a simple form of entertainment for kids. But when looked at deeper, picture books provide many learning opportunities. Not only mental learning, but opportunities for emotional learning and human experiences.

 Students seem to relate with picture stories and take away lessons from them. Even if it's some simple topic such as being a friend, or even a lesson being learned about adding. Picture books are able to relate the stories to topics that students need to know.

Being in a middle school math classroom it makes harder to find books to relate to any lessons taught. I still remember being in middle school and my math teacher reading, Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander. This book is a play on words of vocabulary used in math. I loved this book and I'll always be able to connect back to this story when I am using the circumference formula. In my future classroom, I can definitely see myself reading my students this book and coming up with worksheets or activities to go along with it. Neuschwander also has other books that could be used in the classroom and I am sure they are just as great as the last one.

As a future teacher, I'll be sure to include picture books in my lesson plans and in my classroom. They are just as important as other books. To me, picture books are the underrated classroom textbooks.

Below are links that use Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi, one is the reading of the book online and the other is different activities that could be used in lesson plans.

Reading of Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi

Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi Activities