The Math Curse
Mrs. Z’s 4th & 5th grade math class read the book “The Math Curse” by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith.
The plot summary of the book from Wikipedia describes it nicely:
The book, which is told by a nameless female student, begins with a seemingly innocent statement by her math teacher- “you know, almost everything in life can be considered a math problem.” The next morning, the heroine finds herself thinking of the time she needs to get up along the lines of algebra. Next comes the mathematical school of probability, followed by charts and statistics. As the narrator slowly turns into a “math zombie”, everything in her life is transformed into a problem. A class treat of cupcakes becomes a study in fractions, while a trip to the store turns into a problem of money. Finally, she is left painstakingly calculating how many minutes of “math madness” will be in her life now that she is a “mathematical lunatic.”
Inspired by the story, the students looked around our school and started seeing that math indeed is all around us. In groups, they worked on a storyline to create their own “Math Curse” episodes.
I had shown them previously a video from the Common Craft Show “Wikis in Plain English” and we decided to base the math episodes on their type of explanations and filming style.
Students:
- Spent time brainstorming their stories
- Decided on a math problem they wanted to demonstrate and solve
- Created props and drawings
- Wrote a script
- Practiced their skit
- Directed their own episode
We recorded their episodes with a flip camera and put them together with iMovie.
Hello from Essex, Ontario Canada. Thank you for sharing your experience with your book. I really liked the way that you shared what you learned and created the video. The pictures and the sound came through very nicely and I really liked the special effects. It sounds like you learned a great deal doing this video. Keep up the great work and thank your teacher for Twittering it so that I knew that you had done this.
Hi! We homeschoolers from Louisiana. Thanks so much for sharing your project with us. Here’s what our children thought:
Abby: “I think you did an awesome job! Keep up the good work!”
Ellie: “This is so awesome I would like to make one myself.”
Luc: “Great job!”
You should be very proud of your hard work. We look forward to future releases!
Hi, from Lancaster, PA. Thanks for sharing! You really started thinking about math around you. I liked the way that you presented your problems with simple illustrations, and spoke clearly to help explain what we were seeing. This looked like a fun project where you learned lots!
Hello from St Paul, Minnesota. Your video is excellent and extremely timely because our principal and some teachers are right now today looking for a way for students to demonstrate and record their work. You have given us some good ideas. Thank you for sharing.
Good work. Well done. We are fron Athens Greece, and thank you for sharing
Hello from Halfmoon, NY! Awesome work! This video share came at a wonderful time; my colleagues and I were just exploring Flip cameras and wondering what we could do with it in our classrooms. We loved the presentation: great use of colorful visuals, clear voices, and interesting examples were used for math problem-solving. You gave us great ideas to work with. Thanks for sharing, and happy learning!
Hello from Springfield MA! I loved your video. It has inspired me to look at the math around me and see what problems I can solve. I will also share your video with the math teachers I work with because I know your work will inspire them too. One of the things I loved the most though is how thoughtful you were when you considered who might view this. Thank you for explaining terms and for using words, pictures and sound to teach. This was great!
hi Guys from Bedford , England,
enjoyed watching your video, it really does make you think about how much math is around us. I’m really using this idea to encourage my 5 year old son to be interested in Math and numbers.
you explain hings so clearly which i know is not always easy.