Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Millions, Billions, & Trillions


Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday

Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday is hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy. Every Wednesday, I'll review non-fiction picture book. (It may not always be a picture book. Be sure to visit Kid Lit Frenzy and see what other non-fiction books are shared this week!

Title: Millions, Billions, & Trillions: Understanding Big Numbers 
Author: David A. Adler 
Illustrator: Edward Miller 
Publisher: Holiday House 
Publication Date: January, 2013 
Genre/Format: Non-Fiction/Picture Book 
GoodReads Summary:  The winning nonfiction team returns with a larger-than-life math book that is sure to fascinate young readers. Huge numbers are hard to comprehend. This book explains quantities in terms children can understand. For example, one million dollars could buy two full pizzas a day for more than sixty-eight years.
What I Think: Working with abstract ideas can be tricky for kids because our brains like to have something to connect information with. Millions, Billions, & Trillions takes really big, really abstract numbers and makes them manageable for readers. There are examples about how much pizza, ice cream sundaes and popcorn you could buy to reach a million, a billion or a trillion. I love the bright colors in this book and can see how it would be engaging for students to read and visualize the different scenarios shared in the book. From a teacher's perspective, students could solve some of the problems in the book and show that the answers do reach to one million, billion or trillion. Students can then create their own problems to show these big numbers. For example, a student might think of something they would love to be able to buy every day and then see how many times he or she could buy that item if he or she had one million, one billion or one trillion dollars. Students could solve for all three of the numbers to compare how much longer they would be able to buy something if they had one million compared to one billion dollars. The book shows how we can write about numbers and share our thinking about numbers in words and therefore it seems like a great math resource.
     I did notice in the back of the book that it makes a connection to the Common Core State Standards. In a little blue box on the last page it reads, "This book meets the Common Core State Standards for fourth-grade mathematics in Number and Operations in Base Ten (4.NBT.1)." I thought that was really nifty!
Read Together: Grades 3 - 6 
Read Alone: Grades 3 - 6 
Read With: How Many Jelly Beans? by Andrea Menotti, Cats Night Out by Caroline Stutson 
Snatch of Text: "How many slices of pizza would one million dollars buy? At two dollars and fifty cents a slice, you could buy two full pies a day for more than sixty-eight years."  
Reading Strategies to Practice: Activating Background Knowledge, Making Connections, Asking Questions, Visualizing 
Writing Strategies to Practice: Expository  
Writing Prompts: Write your own math problem to show one million, one billion or one trillion. Explain how you solved your problem and describe the answer you reached and why you chose that problem to solve.  
Topics Covered: Integration - Math 
I *heart* It:

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