Math Teacher Lounge

S3 - 02. Mathematizing Children’s Literature with Allison Hintz and Antony Smith

Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer

In this episode, Mathematizing Children’s Literature authors Allison Hintz and Antony Smith join Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer to discuss what would happen if we were to approach children's literature, and life, through a math lens – and how we can apply those techniques to classroom teaching.

Explore more from the Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Bethany, Lockhart Johnson.

Speaker 2:

Hi, I'm Dan Meyer

Speaker 1:

And we are so excited for another episode of math teacher lounge. And as you know, podcast format, you're listening now. I think one beautiful thing about the podcast format is that it gives us a little bit more time to have these rich conversations and, and I promise I won't do it, but I could talk to our guests for hours, hours, authors, Allison hints, and Tony Smith have just released mathematizing children's literature, sparking connections, joy, and wonder through read alouds and discussion day. We get to talk to the authors, Allison, Tony. Welcome. Welcome to the lounge.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. We're so grateful to be here. Thank

Speaker 1:

You. We're we're so excited to have you here. And I wanna say that my very first was it my first math conference. I don't, maybe it was my first math conference up in Seattle, the CGI conference, and I'm all like, you know, wide eyed and just like, can this be a place for me, this math community. Reenvisioning my relationship with math and thinking about myself as, as a math teacher, what, and I went to your session on mathematizing children's literature, and I was just so fired up. I was so wowed by your ideas, your energy and your passion for students think. And I feel like as I read this book, I felt like I was hanging out with you. Like you were just so encouraging all the way through, of educators, of other folks, working with young people and really guiding us how to listen with joy and with an open curious mind.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I would love to hear a bit about the, the, the Genesis of this book for you folks. Like, uh, my, my I'm coming with this from a, a secondary educator lens. I've got small kids, so that's also part of my interest here, but I love any book that seeks to any idea that seeks to merge what seems like too disparate worlds. Like it's often the case that we feel like, well, there's a approaches for ELA and approaches for math, and they're kind of separate disciplines. And these poor elementary teachers have to have to learn all of them and be experts at all of them. And you hear you both come along and say, Hey, what if they are the same kind of technique? Can you just speak to like how this came about?

Speaker 3:

Definitely Tony, do you wanna take a try? Do you want me to start us off?

Speaker 4:

I can start. We, we all often times, uh, present and talk together and so we kinda switch back and forth. So that's just how we're, uh, so probably about eight or nine years ago, uh, Allison and I, our offices were next to each others, uh, on our small campus. We're both, uh, professors and, um, we just happened to have a few children's books that we looked at together and we were just thumbing through the pages. We really liked children's literature. Uh, and we noticed that, uh, I would stop at certain points wondering about character motive or plot or sequence of events or language Jews. And Allison would stop at very different points in the book and, and notice number and concepts or something about mathematics. And we that's, when we started to wonder, what would it be like if we were sharing, um, a children's book with a group of children and we put our I ideas together, where would we stop? What would we talk about? What would we ask children about in terms of their thinking and what they notice?

Speaker 3:

And so we started playing with these questions that we had and started approaching stories with multiple lenses to see what kinds of things would children notice and what kinds of things might they say. And we were also on our own journey and trying to understand how to plan farm, facilitate lively discussions and classrooms that surface really complex mathematics. And it felt like stories were a place where that might be a fruitful context for hearing. Children's thinking, worked with a lot of teachers and students in our region. We live in the Seattle area and we've applied for some funding over. That's really helped us be in a lot of community based organizations and educational contexts and libraries and pediatricians, offices, and classrooms, various classrooms. And see, what's interesting about this and what might teachers and children do with stories that would surface complex mathematics to think about out together.

Speaker 4:

Over time, we came to the realization that if we wanted to hear children's ideas, we had to stop bombarding them with questions.<laugh> yeah. And at first it made it worse that we were asking them math and literacy questions at the same time. Yeah. And so we realized that what we needed to do was to back off and to ask children what they noticed and wondered.

Speaker 1:

Can you say more about that and how that kind of evolved into mathematizing children's literature?

Speaker 4:

We did work with a number of very thoughtful, talented classroom teachers and children's librarians in public library systems who were just so masterful at asking, uh, open-ended prompts, um, and questions RA than kind of like the defacto reading quiz that a read aloud can become, which I I've always disliked as a literacy educator. And we realized in our observing these, uh, read alouds or, or interactive read alouds or shared reading experiences that given the opportunity in the space and adult who was actually listening, that children came up with all of the ideas we would have asked them about and more so we didn't have to be bombarding them with questions. They were already much more thoughtful than what would've been sufficient to answer our questions

Speaker 3:

And much like mathematics. It was really an iterative process. You know, we had some clunky, we had some clunky read aloud discussions where we were trying to accomplish so much and, um, toggling multiple chart papers and different colored pens and all sorts of how do we capture these ideas and do we operate'em do we keep'em together? And so it's really been over time that with partners, we've learned these ways of having multiple reads of the same story that allow us to hear what children notice and wonder. Um, and then to delve more deeply into their quest and their ideas through multiple reads where we might, we might spotlight literary ideas that they notice. We might spotlight mathematical ideas that they notice we might make purposeful integrations between those, but we found it to be most productive. Um, and Kristen gray really help them think about this to have an open notice and wonder, get everything out much like an open strategy share. We welcome here, record all the ideas and it, and it goes all over everywhere. You know, it can be a really not mathy noticing, and those are amazing. So there's a lot of, um, yes, there is a lady bug on this page. The grandma is wearing green triangle earrings. Oh, your grandma wears green earrings. I mean, it all comes out. Wait,

Speaker 1:

Have you been in my classroom? Cause

Speaker 3:

That's<laugh> exactly. And then, you know, we think of it a lot. Like if teacher math teachers might use by practices for select selecting and sequencing, or if you might move from an open strategy share to a targeted share, how can we get out all the questions that children are asking and then step back from them, take some time to really think about what they're telling us. They're curious about and plan some purposeful, intentional sub discussions that can delve more deeply into their, their ideas.

Speaker 2:

I'd love to go into that a little bit more if that's all right. Um, I'm gonna speak from someone who doesn't have a, uh, an elementary background and who I'm gonna voice some, some, some worries that I had some anxiety, one, one anxiety I have like in a classroom or a curriculum is when there's no room for student ideas, right. When it's like, oh, there's just the, is just room for the, the curriculum author or the teacher here. That is a sadness. Um, but I, when, when I see an instructional environment like you're describing here, where there is openness to all kinds of different student ideas of different levels of formality from different kinds of cultural funds of knowledge or, or wherever, I also get a little bit nervous because that's like that increases the risk that a student might come to understand that my ideas are not good enough, whereas in the class with, with no room for their, their ideas from their home or their language or their hobbies, like they're not gonna internalize the message that, that wasn't good enough. And so I'm really curious as you move from the open notice and wonder where kids share all of themselves with you, um, and then you, you move to a targeted, uh, a more, a focus on some sort of disciplinary objective. How do you navigate that tension and help students feel like their content are valuable, even though we aren't taking them up per se,

Speaker 3:

That's such an important question. I mean, we've really, I think we've grappled with this broadly in math education. I think any time we're thinking about which ideas we choose to take up to pursue to sitter, we have a responsibility to think carefully about whose ideas are being taken up and heard and considered. And so one of the tensions I hear you naming, I think Dan is when we engage in lively discussion where children's thinkings at the center, how do we make sure to upend and interrupt kinda status norms that run the risk of being deepened? Um, and I think by paying attention to whose ideas are taken up as much as which ideas are taken up, um, and what are the what's the mathematics we wanna explore is one is one tension. Um, another tension I might hear you naming is, you know, the, the complications that teachers face with time and pressure and coverage, and which mathematics ends up getting worked on. And, um, you know, it's, it's something we've really had to struggle with in mathematics education, where we move to more discuss oriented classrooms that are really centered in sense, making to know that it takes a lot of time to do this thoughtful, thoughtful work. Um, does that begin to get at some of the tensions you're raising? Is there, is there more you're thinking about,

Speaker 2:

I, I think it's really helpful that you, that you kind of broaden the scope of the question beyond your book to this is a, this is an issue that we are, you know, really challenged by and focused on broadly in math education mm-hmm<affirmative>. And, um, I appreciate you bringing the, bringing the element in, of like, of whose ID, not just which idea is taken up, but whose idea is taken up is an opportunity where let's say multiple people raise an idea that is towards an objective, the teacher, as they have the opportunity to disrupt certain kinds of like status. Um, I like ideas about status in that moment, from your perspective, like, are there techniques to say, I don't know, parking lot certain kinds of questions and say like, Hey, like these are awesome. You know, I don't know. I just, I know that I see kids at like ninth grade. Like they, they are very reticent often. They've, they've internalized totally this sense of like, I'm not gonna just like, share about the, the pants the grandma's wearing, you know, that's like, I, that will not be received well. And so I'm just kinda wondering how, how that happens and like, what are the ways we, we can disrupt that. Um, so in that process,

Speaker 4:

So thinking about, uh, Dan, what the, you know, from the teacher's perspective, in those kinds of scenarios where you wanna honor each, each child's contribution, uh, a couple of things that come to mind, uh, one is that by, you know, initially by modeling what I, as a teacher, what something that I notice or wonder about, um, helps kind of set the expectation for what kind of response, um, would be encouraged and it's, and it's broad, but it gives an example. And then also we really try to record or to chart all of the ideas that are shared so that we can, you know, revisit and honor those together. And then, you know, either later on another day, if we choose one or two of those to explore in some way within more focused read, um, then another thing that we, that we do is, um, have the idea investigation afterward that, um, continues that thought, but goes back to being as open ended as Paul possible so that, you know, those students or children who maybe didn't have their idea as the one that was focused on by the group could go back to that or explore some other idea of their own. So that the idea investigation isn't a lockstep, um, extension activity, which is why we don't call it that. Um, so they could again bring in their own perspective. But I have to say from the teacher's point of view, there is that moment of potential panic<laugh> cause there is that power transfer when you're asking children to help steer where this is going. And if you really mean it, you have to let them steer a little bit, and that can be to terrifying. And, um, I always think of, um, one teacher, uh, Ashley, we, we worked with who read adorable books, stacked the cats, um, by Susie gani. And in that book, there's a point where there are eight cats and they're kind of trying to be a tower of cats and they fall and they're sort of in the air on that pay age. And she asked her first grader, she stopped. She asked, how will, how do you think, how will the cats land? And for about a minute and a half, the entire<laugh> class, the silent, they had their little paper, they had chart paper, they had, um, uh, clipboards, they had everything in needed, but that, that unusual phenomenon of a group of six and seven year olds actually just sitting and thinking and not being peppered with activities was really stressful, but amazing. And then after about the 90 seconds, they started out into their exploration at how the cat, the aid cats might land. They just needed them that to think. And it's so rare that we're able to let children have that

Speaker 3:

In that same moment, Ashley, who's a learning partner to us. She turned to us kind of quietly, like, should I pose a different question? And<laugh>, we're like, no, let's stick with it. Let's see what happens. So I think it creates this space too, this thinking culture, right? And, and this culture of what does that mean to really pose a rich task. That's open ended where there's multiple access points. Those eight cats could land in so many different ways. And there was broad this, there was a wide range of all the cats landing and ones on their feet, cuz cats always land on their feet, their feet<laugh>. And there was, there was every combination. And so, um, I think what's, what's really interesting. And to me, this brings back to your wonder, Dan is, you know, what's the risk and openness and there's always risk. And, um, it's scary as a teacher, right? If I'm not the authority of knowledge and I don't have a control over where we're gonna go, it might get into places that I didn't anticipate, or I don't really feel as solid in the math I want to. Um, or I don't know what it sounds like to stick with silence and wait time, um, to know if my students are really in productive struggle or if that question was a flop. And so, um, I think this is some practice space for young mathematicians and teachers of mathematics and just teachers to explore with that openness and kind of the risk of the openness required for complex thinking to emerge.

Speaker 1:

You know, it feels like you, the way you're both describing this, it really is a culture shift. Right. I kept feeling like I was given permission to be a beginner. As I read this book. Like I was really, I, I was, I loved how you said, I, I believe it was you Allison, when you were in the class, you had a couple index card that you kept on your clipboard and that as you walked around, you would like, Hey, if I don't know what to ask, I ask one of these questions, you know, and just this idea that, that, like Dan was saying, there is that loss of control, but that's also a way to create this culture where students ideas are valued and are allowing students to really generate the questions, which I thought was such an important idea to explore.

Speaker 3:

We started this work long ago, super excited about math books. And we saw a lot of potential in them and we still do. But the limitation we saw is that math books, they, they put forth a certain mathematics to be curious about. In some ways they tell you what mathematics to think about. So we started asking ourselves what would happen if we considered any story, a chance to engage as mathematical sense makers. And we started playing with non-math books and we got to a place where we could consider every story and opportunity to engage in mathematical thinking. And so we started noticing things over times, oh, these books tend to be really math. We call those text dependent. We'd have to pay attention to the mathematics to understand the story, whereas this pile of stories, these, um, they're not overtly math. You could really enjoy this story and not pay attention to mathematics and have an amazing conversation. But what would happen if we thought of a, out this story as mathematical sense makers and how might it deepen our understanding of the story mm-hmm<affirmative> and then this other teetering pile of books. These are books where, um, you know, children didn't tend to engage as, as overtly, as mathematicians in it, but there's opportunities in this story to go back to something, to, to an illustration, to a comment and think as mathematicians. And those were more about illustration exploring. And so, as we noticed these different kinds of books, we really broaden what we thought about. And I think one of the things we really wanna think about in community through this book is what happens if we approach any story, every story as mathematical sense makers, because stories are alive and children's lives in homes and communities and in schools. Yeah. And, um, it's a broad opportunity that we wanna, we wanna take up. I was thinking, uh, and as I stay in this train room, just a moment about book selection, before we move into that process. Um, Bethany in, in a previous MTL, you talked about representation mm-hmm<affirmative>. And do you remember when you shared the image of hair braiding?

Speaker 1:

Yes. Vividly, yes.<laugh>.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And C can you say just what that meant to you? What that, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, it was, it was from a conference Sunil sing had, had used and was talking about the artistry and math mathematics and beauty in hair braiding. And, um, particularly, uh, he was showing this particular image of this black woman with her hair braided in profile and looking at the angles and the symmetry. And it, I shared that, you know, I spent so many hours in the beauty shop with my aunties and my mom and my grandma and continued to, to this day that it just, it struck me immediately as familiar. And it struck me immediately as, as seeing an image that was reflective of my lived reality, projected as valuable and worthwhile for consideration in the world of mathematics, which is not what I felt as a student of mathematics as a, as a young young adult or child. So it was this beautiful moment of the, for me, the power of when we see images and we allow opportunities for reenvisioning what maybe a common practice for that student, or maybe something that they see every day.

Speaker 3:

And in that, in that same way, that image that was put up, we wanna think really carefully about representation in the stories that we select. And when we think of stories as mirrors or windows, we really wanna be mindful in story selection of who stories are told and who stories are heard. And when you said that you would sit down to listen to a, and you felt at ease or that you saw an image and you saw yourself that can, that can be, and should be something we really think carefully about when we select the stories that we select.

Speaker 2:

It's a, a wider path for representation of different kinds of people in literature, because people's stories seem so much more present and towards the surface of their lives, versus say the abstractions and numbers and shapes and mathematics, it feels like more of a struggle to find ways to show people, Hey, like you're here, this, this place belongs to you. So in all these reasons, I think it's really great. You folks are using literature, which has this history of human humanities, literally humanities as a vehicle for, for mathematics. It's, uh, that seems pretty special here.

Speaker 4:

We both go to libraries and bookstores and, and look through books as often as we can, but also, um, our partner, uh, children's librarian Maymay woo, uh, helped us go through. She, when we would meet, she would bring three or 400 books at a time

Speaker 1:

When you described her wheeling in the cart. Oh, I wish I been in that room<laugh> and she,

Speaker 4:

The cart was, you know, probably three or four times bigger than she was some sometimes. And we would, we would go through hundreds of books and look at them and listen to her thoughts as a skilled librarian sharing with families, diverse families, and what catches, you know, the attention of a three year old sitting with her grandfather. And, and that was really a, a valuable, helpful experience. And it's a partnership that, that continues. So the last stop on market street, and this is, this is in the book. We talk about this, this children's book quite a bit. It, um, but in this, in this story, uh, CJ with his Gran, with Nana, his grandmother are riding the bus to the last stop on market, straight in San Francisco, uh, to go as we will find out, to go and to help serve in a soup kitchen to help the community. And, um, it's we, the teacher Susan had, uh, had, um, the children record their ideas. She tared them in an open notice and wonder read. And one of the ideas that a, uh, a young boy noticed was that CJ on the bus, uh, a man with a guitar starts playing the, the guitar on the bus and CJ closes his eyes and it says J's chest grew full. And he was lost in the sound and the sound gave him the feeling of magic. So this boy said, I wonder, what does that feel like if you're feeling the magic? What's that? And that was one of many ideas in the open notice and wonder, and I'll, Allison will talk about the math lens read, but first Susan went back and read with them. She had that idea, she circled it on the chart paper. And another day that week, she said, let's go back and visit this story. We really liked. And remember, we wondered what feeling the magic was like, let's go back through and let's keep track of all the feelings and emotions that CJ had across the journey to the soup kitchen in this book. And so they did another read of the story. They were very familiar with it, of course, but they noticed new things and they also, every few pages stopped and she had helped chart all of the emotions that CJ experienced from envy to excitement, to sadness. There's a huge range in this book. And it was fascinating.

Speaker 3:

I think one of the things that the children noticed was that CJ's feelings were shaped by community and that he was, he shaped and shaped. He was shaped by and helped shape his community. And so the ways that he felt across the story were impacted by the other characters that he comes across the guitar man on the bus, the bus driver, who can pull a coin out from behind someone's ear. Um, his, the lady with the butterflies in the jar, Nana helping him to see the rainbow and the students started, you know, being curious about that, how do we shape and how are we shaped by community? What communities are we a part of this class is one community. I'm in many communities across my life. And they started quantify the number of people in the story. So Mrs. HED went back for, uh, math, lens's read, and she said, let's just keep track of, and pay attention to how many people are in CJ's life in this day. Because I can hear you starting to think about quantity this class at the same time. And other areas of the day had been working on counting collections, how to keep track. So they got out their tools. Some people pulled out 10 frames, some people pulled out clipboards. They had a wide range of things they could use to help them keep track. They developed their own strategy, keep track who we want. She did a quicker read through it, flipping the pages, and then they get into these debates.<laugh> we already counted that for a, but they took their hat off and put it down to collect money. What about the, that's a big person dog. Yeah. There's a dog count in his community. Do animals count in our community? Yes, they count. Uh, and so we went through and quantified and there was really this understanding as you saw these people throughout the story that, um, communities can be of different sizes, but community has impact. And you have responsibility in your community to show up and to lean in and to, um, know that bringing your full, authentic, vulnerable self, you shape people and they shape you. And what communities are people a part of. And it turned into this really interesting discussion about quantity and helped us think more about quantity and community. I think a really important moment for us and for that class was the transition from being people who almost did mathematics to a story like counted things on a page, um, count acorns on a page in an autumn book to being mathematicians who thought within the story.

Speaker 4:

And then, uh, two idea investigations that came from that. Not at the same time, of course, but with the same group of, of children, one was, um, they identified an emotion of their own and wrote and drew about that. And also, um, who helped them, you know, address or get out of, or, um, acknowledge that emotion. And then the other idea invest was that all of the children drew, um, or kind of mapped out, um, a community that they were part of, whether it was their neighborhood or their classroom or their soccer team or whatever it was. And so it, then it, those, uh, investigations strengthened the connections of those concepts to the lives of those children.

Speaker 1:

Well, I, I actually wanted to ask you about idea investigations. Cause I feel like that was such an, there was such an important invitation in your book and the way I understood the I idea investigation is you're really paying attention to what's coming up in your other reads. Right? And then these are opportunity to extend the thinking, or like you said, to extend a particular aspect, what's your community. Can we map your community or what's a particular emotion. And it was in such contrast to what I think I have probably done in my classroom more than once, which was like, oh, we read this story about seals. So now my story problem is gonna be about seals, right? Like in the story,

Speaker 3:

You know,

Speaker 1:

Jojo, the seal had five balls. So if Jojo still had five balls and two of them bounced away, you know, or whatever. Right. But that's not what an idea investigation is. Right?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I think this is where we also had some stumbles and can totally relate to what you're saying as previous classroom teachers as well. Um, we have come to a place where we, we are pretty in favor of a super open ended idea investigation that takes up the things that have surfaced in the multiple reads and making sure it's a rich task with many, many ways. Children can engage with that. There's many, many, many right answers or ways to engage less is more there. So, so we moved way away from like even a worksheet that might have an idea from it to blank paper and math tools and places to get into some productive struggle around some of the complex things that were raised

Speaker 4:

And challenge with worksheet, um, is that they put a frame around children's ideas. Um, so either there are only three lines to write on, or there's only a small box to draw in. Um, whereas a blank page is really, it opens up the possibility. Um, and so I was, is it and Jonas who wrote black, sorry, I don't have it in front of me. The book splash about animals that end up in and out of the pond, including a cat that was not happy about ending up in the pond and an idea investigation after that for young, very young children was with the list of the different creatures, uh, displayed, uh, the front of the room on blank paper, Hey, draw your own pond and decide how many of which and, and each type of animal you want in your pond and then write about it just on blank paper. And so that allowed some children to draw like three giant goldfish, but other children drew 17 frogs and three cats. And, and just, it, it lets children fall,

Speaker 1:

But it was theirs, right. It was their

Speaker 4:

Idea<laugh>. And that comes partly from, I think, as Allison mentioned, we both were classroom teachers before moving into academia. And I, I remember giving children worksheets, particularly math worksheets, where they weren't necessarily bad, but at right at the bottom, it says like, explain your strategy. And it gives two lines.

Speaker 3:

Right?<laugh>

Speaker 4:

The only, the only thing a seven year old can write there is I thought, or I solved it.<laugh> and then that's not where we, where we need to

Speaker 2:

Go. Yeah. If I could just have it, can I just ask the indulgence of the, the primary crowd here? Like I'm trying to make sense of all this. And I just wanna like offer my perspective. My summary statement of is going on here. I'm trying to, I love how you both came here. How

Speaker 1:

You doing Dan? How you doing

Speaker 2:

<laugh> I'm I am a, I'm a loving this a lot. Um, B I, I came in here loving how you folks are broadening the work of, of primary education to kind of find commonalities between these sometimes seemingly disparate kinds of teaching and ELA and math love that I wanna say. But I think you folks are describe with all these teachers you observed and your own work is the work of attaching meaning to what students might not realize yet has meaning, or they might think it only has one kind of meaning, but you, the teacher with their knowledge realizes that there are many more dimensions of meaning that can be attached to those thoughts. And I'm, I'm hearing that from you folks, when you describe a, what math is and the power of a teacher to name a thing as mathematical like, oh, you didn't think math was that, but math, math is noticing math is wondering, math is asking questions for one. Um, but also this work you're describing of, of how like first the, the, the task has to invite lots of student thoughts and then to say like, oh, I see that there's a, a similarity to these two. And to raise those up for a conversation or to ask a question like to extend one person's, uh, student's question a little bit more, but it's always, I'm just hearing you folks attaching more meaning than the student might have originally thought. I, I appreciate the conversation. That's really interesting.

Speaker 1:

Well, and now that the book is out it's, I think it's gonna keep evolving right now that it's gonna be in the hands of teachers and librarians and educators and caregivers. It's exciting to see kind of where it goes next, which actually brings us to our empty challenge. Dan Meyer, do you wanna share

Speaker 2:

Matthew GI lounge? We have a, a challenge for, uh, the folks who listen and we'd love for them to hop into the, the Facebook group, Matthew GI lounge, or hit us up at, on Twitter at MTL show. And just to kind of exercise beyond listening, exercise, the ideas you folks are talking about, some kind of a, a challenge that can help us dive deeper into your ideas. So what, what would you folks suggest, uh, for our crowd, for our listeners?

Speaker 3:

I would love to invite people to playfully experiment with a favorite story, with a story that's new to you. I would love to invite listeners to sit with a story maybe on your own, and just ask yourself as a mathematician. What do you notice and wonder in this story, don't feel any pressure, um, maybe sit with a child or some children and listen to what they notice and wonder, like really listen, don't ask questions, but hear their questions and place children at the center and consider multiple reads, consider continuing to pursue their questions. And we have a, we have an, a planning template that might support people in kind of sketching out some ideas if you're open to playing with that too.

Speaker 1:

And we will post that's awesome, a link for that planning template in our Facebook group and on to Twitter as well. So thank you so much for that resource, cuz I think it'll definitely help. Uh, it could help you, like you said, it could help you kind of organize your thoughts or help you think about this work in a new way. So thank you for that resource and thank you for the amazing resource that is mathematizing children's literature. I am so excited to continue to engage with you both and with listeners as they dive into this book, if folks want to engage with you more, where can they find you? How can they reach you?

Speaker 3:

Well, we're on Twitter.

Speaker 1:

Great.

Speaker 5:

We're Let me try that now. Lemme

Speaker 1:

Try that again. Cause it does sound like I'm like where can they find you?

Speaker 3:

4, 2, 5?

Speaker 5:

That's the bookstore

Speaker 1:

Y'all if folks want to, if folks want to continue this conversation or in, or share these ideas or the math challenge, how can they tag you? How can they, they reach you on the, the worldwide web besides the math teacher lounge Facebook group.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Well we are both on Twitter, uh, and we've been trying to promote the hashtag mathematizing children. June's literature. It's very long, but once you type it once you can, your phone or computer.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Those click, right. Is that what it's now?

Speaker 4:

<laugh> the other is that we do, um, for our project, we have an Instagram account that is mathematize children's literature.

Speaker 3:

We care really deeply about hearing from people. You know, we, we think our ideas are constantly evolving and that there's such exciting room to grow. And we just felt compared to share what we were learning now so that together we could learn and build vibrant experiences for young children and teachers and families through stories. So we want to hear from people we wanna learn about, um, stories that are in your lives and what children say and grow these ideas together

Speaker 1:

And credit to Dan. You did. You told me you went and ordered a bunch of the books they have on the suggested read list.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh,

Speaker 1:

You read'em to your,

Speaker 2:

I got such from my significant others around here for, I dropped on in one night, uh, all book. I didn't have some of them. I did we not fully illiterate around here. We do love the written word at the, my household, but there were a bunch that I, that I grabbed. I I'm Moring them out day by day.

Speaker 1:

Wait at bedtime. I read my one. Yearold one is a snail. Ted is a crab. And let me tell you, he had vigorous pointing and that, Hey, we're on the

Speaker 3:

We're on the

Speaker 1:

Road.<laugh> Deeply grateful, not only for your work and your, um, your, your beautiful book and your work, but also for the invitation to dive into the world of children, literature in a way that many of us have not before. And it's fun. Thank you, Tony. And thank you, Allison. And thanks for hanging out in the lounge.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for having the

Speaker 4:

Lounge. It's

Speaker 3:

Thank you both.

People on this episode