Summary:
The
book Pigs Will be Pigs is written by
Amy Axelrod and has illustrations by Sharon McGinley Nally. The book starts out
by showing what the pig family’s house look like, and then the story begins.
The pigs are hungry and open the fridge, but there’s no food there. Daddy pig
and the kid-pigs have eaten everything that mommy pig had shopped earlier in
the morning. Daddy pig suggests for the family to go out and eat, but Mommy pig
realizes they only have one dollar. They start searching the house for money
and luckily enough, they find dollars, pennies, dimes and quarters in all
different rooms of their house. When they have enough money to feed the whole
family with, they go out to eat at their favorite restaurant “Enchanted
Enchilada”. They look at the menu and decide to order four specials. They
finish eating, and get so stuffed they can almost not walk home. When they get
home, they realize that their house is super messy, after the long search for
money, but they’re still happy that they are not hungry any more.
Mathematical
Concepts Presented in the book:
This
book deals with algebra. Throughout the first pages, the pigs keeps finding
money, in order to get enough money to go out and eat. The money they find can
be presented in an algebraic expression where T=1x + 0.1y + 0.25z + 0.01d where
T is the total, y represents the dollars, z the quarters, y the dimes and d the
pennies. When the family arrives at the restaurant, the menu with the prices of
the dishes appears, and again it is up to the reader to figure out what the pig
family can afford with the money they found. After this, they pay the bill, and
yet again, it is up to the reader to figure out how much money the pigs can get
back (all the information is provided at the end of the book). The book does a
great job of simplifying algebraic expressions into a real-life situation that
might be easier for a beginner to understand.
Why
is literature an effective way to teach/learn a mathematical concept:
In
order for someone without mathematical knowledge to understand math, I think
it’s very important to make him or her feel comfortable with the material. If
you just throw an algebraic expression at someone, without explaining that it’s
actually not too scary to use letters instead of numbers, they might feel
scared and doubt the skills they already have. Literature is a great way of
introducing concepts to make people understand why it is good to learn, and
also how it applies to them. Literature might create an interest in a concept
instead of making it seem boring and hard, which is also an important component
in order to learn well.
I would never imagine a book called Pigs Will Be Pigs would introduce a mathematics concept as important as algebra. I strongly agree with you that literature--something most of the people like-- to introduce a math concept-- which might be something unfamiliar for most of the people. No need to mention that this is very important for students at early age.
ReplyDeleteKarolina, very interesting book, I had never heard about it. I really liked how you connected the story of the book specifically with algebra and showing it with an equation. I also believe that it is important to make someone feel comfortable about the material.
ReplyDeleteI think you provide a great short summary of the story, and you pull out and present all of the mathematical concepts in a very straight forward way.
ReplyDeletekarolina,
ReplyDeletethis is a fun story and i like how you showed a way to use algebraic expressions to symbolically represent the complex concepts that are explained simplistically in this text. you make excellent points about using literature to make a concept that might seem frightening, not so scary and more accessible.
professor little