Lea Barness
Lemonade for Sale by Stuart J. Murphy tells the story of four kids and their pet parrot who decide to sell lemonade in their neighborhood. The kids decide it is a good idea to track their progress by using graphs. On the x axis is the day of the week and the y axis is how many cups of lemonade they sold that day. One day, a boy next door starts his own business juggling for money. This made their sales of lemonade decline, which was shown on their bar graphs.
The book does a good job of showing the use of graphs and how they can be affective in tracking ones progress. When the drop in revenue occurred, this was shown numerically which makes it easier for the kids to see cause and effect of competing businesses. Graphs are a good way of creating visuals of numbers, often times plain numbers are difficult to interpret how they relate to the time passed. There are many different ways the kids could benefit from graphs. They could graph their profits, or if they wanted to show the percentage of people who liked lemonade compared to iced tea, they could use a pie graph.
Using literature to explain math is a good way to relate it to real world examples. It is difficult for many people to see how math is relevant in our daily lives. These books make it apparent to kids how we use math everyday. By using characters that kids can relate to it makes it easier for them to see themselves using math and applying it to real life.
I agree that sometimes numbers can be hard to interpret and that graphs can help a lot. Visual learning is definitely easier for some people. I like how you link literature to real world examples. I think its important to do so. All and all great job Lea.
ReplyDeleteI like how this situation can show how one factor can have causation on the decrease of another factor.
ReplyDeleteThe book I also did my post on taught kids how to use graphs. I agree that graphs are a good visual for people to conceptually understand math.
ReplyDeleteI liked the story you chose, I think its pretty cool that the kids made graphs to track their profits. Super smart of them. I like how your story uses such a relatable situation to teach young kids graphs, personally for me when I was younger I had a really hard time with graphs so this story would of helped. Good job.
ReplyDeleteI also read this story, I think it's such a good example of learning through literature! Graphs are a really good way for people to understand math better, and I think this book did such a good job of showing children how important math is in real life. I agree, literature makes learning math a little easier for kids!
ReplyDeletelea,
ReplyDeletegood job. you are right that literature can help relate concepts to everyday life.
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