Session # 1014 9:05 AM

Numeracy + Information Literacy = Success

Melissa Poremba,

B.A., B.Math., B.Ed., LIT Dipl.,

We expertly use our libraries to support literacy skills development. Now let's

use our same assets to support numeracy education! The library is the

perfect place to curb "math anxiety" as we can show students that math is

useful, interesting, relevant and even fun. Learn how to utilize your library's

collections and services to integrate numeracy skills development in

information literacy programming.

Information literacy is defined as "the ability to

acquire, critically evaluate, select, use, create

and communicate information in ways which

lead to knowledge and wisdom" (Information

Literacy and Equitable Access (ILEA): Draft

Document, Ministry of Education and Training,

1995). ~ p. 3

As Figure 1 demonstrates, information

literacy encompasses "all other forms of

literacy -- traditional literacy (the ability to

read and write) and media literacy (the

ability to critically evaluate and create

media, such as television, advertising,

news stories and movies) and numerical

literacy (the ability to understand and

solve problems with data and numbers)."

(ILEA) ~ p. 3

~ p. 4

To navigate a library, you need

(and vice versa!)

Increase awareness of the potential of the library to support numeracy education

› Have traditionally focused on literacy (and where most are more comfortable)

Give you the confidence to establish and promote your library as a destination for numeracy support and resources

› You already have what you need

Present a wide range of ideas for combining information literacy and numeracy initiatives

› Don‘t be overwhelmed

Inspire you to come up with more ways to integrate numeracy into your library‘s collections and programs

› Can‘t possibly cover everything today

› Adapt—every library is different

“Math” words within

the document:

• graphs

• pictographs

• charts

• data

• problem solving

• timelines

• spreadsheets

• tally charts

• probability

• surveys

• samples

• bias

• reasonableness of

results

• matrices

Sort and classify objects by characteristic and category (K)

Identify parts of fictional texts such as table of contents and chapters (Gr. 1)

Read pictures for information (Gr. 1) [i.e. size, number]

Identify pattern books (Gr. 1)

Identify major Dewey Decimal categories (Gr. 2)

Begin to use the Dewey Decimal system, simple indexes and catalogues (Gr. 2)

Use a table of contents, index and chapter headings (Gr. 2)

Read simple pattern books, chart stories and non-fiction texts for pleasure and understanding

Identify the parts of non-fiction texts such as indexes (Gr. 3)

Begin to identify catalogue record elements (Gr. 3)

Begin to use catalogues to locate materials by call number (Gr. 3)

Identify Dewey Decimal sub-categories (Gr. 4)

Use index in multi-volume works (Gr. 4)

Compare fiction and nonfiction texts to classify their features (Gr. 4)

Begin to search the Internet using keywords in single search engines (Gr. 5)

Describe information anxiety and overload in contemporary society (Gr. 8)

Select handbooks, almanacs and directories (Gr. 9)

Verify the logic of argument (Gr. 9)

Search the Internet using a range of strategies available in a variety of single search engines (Gr. 9)

Select appropriate census material (Gr. 10)

Analyze inaccuracy and ambiguity in information and their effect on argument (Gr. 10)

Identify the role of information in society in such fields as criminology (Gr. 10)

Interpret statistical information in varied media such as handbooks, yearbooks, almanacs and reports (Gr. 10)

Describe different classification systems (Gr. 11)

Explain ways of making information secure such as encryption (Gr. 11)

Analyze both inductive and deductive arguments and evaluate the logic of their conclusions (Gr. 12)

In other words … there are numerous examples!!!

Main categories/perspectives › Library organization and collections

› Individual items as manipulatives

› Content of the resources

Direct and indirect

› Research/Searching techniques

Main audiences Students (range of abilities and

interests)

Teachers

Information literacy lessons supporting

numeracy skills instruction

Numeracy skills instruction

supporting

information literacy lessons

Important to be aware of mathematics curriculum

• Are you introducing a new topic?*

• Are you expanding upon a topic already taught in the math class?

Collaborating with teachers is essential

*Not teaching the math!

Dewey Decimal System

Library organization and collections › Where are the non-fiction books? › How can you tell? What are the 10 main Dewey

Classes? › Why ten? › In what other ways could we classify and

organize the library collection? › How have you organized your books at home?

In your classroom? › What are the main sub-classes? (Division) › Move through Dewey hundreds to thousands › Discuss: 398 and 813 › Look at OCLC

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/summaries/#300

Sample bookmark

from Demco

Searching/Researching › Locating items on the shelves (Not

trivial!) › Record call number from catalogue,

match to shelf location, locate exact match

› How are shelves labeled? Do you need to locate the correct bay first? Then the correct shelf? (Order, inequalities, notion of ―range‖)

› Whole numbers then decimals

› Decimals require knowledge of place value

› Watch terminology: 599.29 vs. 599.4 › Search for a subject and see how many

ranges of Dewey numbers treat that subject

http://holmanlibraryblog.blogspot.com/

DDC is a complex and nuanced

classification system—worthy of lots of

attention!

Every time you guide a student in

locating a non-fiction book on the

shelves, every time you train a page

(library helper), you are essentially

reviewing a mathematics lesson!

Be aware of the progression of steps

(spiral the curriculum)

Extremely important that students

understand the universality of this

system

http://frank.mtsu.edu/~vvesper/dewey2.htm

Must practice

―Order in the Library‖ http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valmstrum/s2s/utopia/library4/src/library4.html

―Shelved: Librarian Game‖ app for iPad and iPhone http://speakquietly.blogspot.com/2011/01/librarian-game.html

Collection as manipulatives › Evaluate expressions involving

decimals and search for items with corresponding Dewey numbers

› Take several books and perform operations with their Dewey numbers

› Organize scavenger hunt matching math question answers to call numbers

› ―Dewey Decimal Sudoku‖ in School Library Media Activities Monthly http://www.schoollibrarymedia.com/artic

les/Montgomery2007v23n10.html

Look for teachable moments

Seize opportunities

› Formal

› informal

Try to seamlessly integrate

› We all use math every day!

Ratio

• Proportion of collection in various genres, formats, etc.;

• Compare with number of shelves in various genres

Rate

• If purchase books at rate x and weed at rate y . . .

• If we have 4 copies of the book, the regular loan period is two weeks and you are

15th in the queue, when are you likely to obtain the book?

• What is the most popular book in the collection? How would we determine this?

Estimation

• Do you think we have more picture books or more fiction books?

• Number of items in collection, in each section of the collection – what information

would you need?

• Do we have enough space to combine the softcover and hardcover picture

books?

Problem solving

• What information would you need to calculate the approximate value of the

books in the collection?

• What should we do with books that are never borrowed?

• What if we keep purchasing new books but not discarding?

Have students tally, chart and/or graph their findings

How many numbers can you find on/in a book? (ISBN, price, pages, chapters, reading level, date, Dewey number, edition, etc.)

Have you seen a book with an unusual page numbering pattern?

What did we gain by switching to ISBN-13? How many more items can we uniquely identify?

Why do we need barcodes? (or library cards?)

Reference collection is excellent place to study concept of ‗relative size‘ as ‗biggest books‘ usually located there. What does ‗biggest book‘ mean?

Use duplicate copies and Big Books (read aloud size) to demonstrate ‗similar‘ and ‗congruent‘

Shape of books

Golden ratio

Merchandising—appeal

The geometry of bookshelves!!!

Library architecture and design

―The Library as Shape‖ in The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel (p. 129-161)

The mathematics of bookmaking

Book fairs › What is the total value of the books on your

wish list?

› Did you qualify to get the promotional prize (min. $25)?

› You have $15 to spend and the books you have selected cost…

› What value of books would each person in the school need to purchase for us to reach our goal?

The library budget is $1000, what combination of items from the wish list/Forest of Reading list can we afford to purchase?

Why are students charged for lost books? Overdue books?

Are donated books really ‗free‘?

Collection can be categorized based on many ‗attributes‘ (hardcover/soft-cover, fiction/nonfiction, reference/circulating, etc.)

Arrange selection of books into various patterns based on attributes

Overlap with Venn diagrams

Discussion of the geometric patterns of the Laurentian Library‘s tile floor designed by Michelangelo: http://ralph.cs.cf.ac.uk/papers/Geometry/Laurentian.pdf

Activity: Book Drive

› Sort books: fiction, non-fiction, picture books

› Tally books in each category

› Use Excel to make chart and graph

› Submit to newsletter

Learn to use OPAC features by answering questions such as

› How many books do we have by Robert Munsch?

› How many items that come up under a keyword search for ‗bears‘ are fiction?

› What is the oldest book we have on the subject of mathematics?

› How could I find out the average age of a portion of the collection?

Explain that all electronic resources are founded upon the binary number system

What other subject headings might be used when searching for ‗math‘ books?

Why is it important to record the entire Dewey number from the catalogue before going to the shelves?

Search Engine Math from Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/2156021

How to Use Search Engine Math to Search the Internet Effectively http://www.ehow.com/how_5010176_use-math-search-internet-effectively.html

Pandia: A Short and Easy Search Engine Tutorial › Boolean Operators

http://www.pandia.com/goalgetter/4.html

› Search Engine Math http://www.pandia.com/goalgetter/10.html

From OSLA‘s Information Studies,

pages 18 and 19.

Zimmer, David, et al. Mathematics of

Data Management. Scarborough, ON:

Nelson, 2002. (page viii)

Some of these activities may leave the shelves in a

shambles, but they are well worth it if students gain

exposure to the collection and find something that

they would like to borrow

› Plot Central Incidental

› Characters Students Math teachers Mathematicians

› Point it out › Discuss it › Encourage students to locate more

Mathematics in fiction = Mathematics in context

What do we call the application of

mathematics in a story?

A word problem!

Now being called

―story problems‖!

Joe borrowed three books from the library while

his sister Nancy borrowed nine. After one

week, their mother returned four of the books.

How many library books does the family still

have out?

The Poremba Public Library charges $.15 per

day for overdue books, and $1.00 per day for

overdue DVDs. Rick still has out five books

and four movies that were due on February 4.

If the library is open every day and therefore

accrues fines every day, how much will Rick

have to pay if he returns his books today,

February 10?

2011 Fiction Nominee

See examples

p. 13

p. 63-65

―Mathematical Fiction‖

maintained by

Alex Kasman

College of Charleston

http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/

DEAR, DIRT, SSR

› Get the math teachers on board

Math anxiety

Giftedness

Don‟t pass along your own „math phobia‟, please!

You wouldn‟t say you don‟t like reading!

Where could we verify a math concept

presented in a fictional work?

Savant Math Prodigy

Hardy and Ramanujan Sonya Kovalevsky

Sophie

Germain

Reference to ‗Pi‘ in the Bible

Try ‗Google‘ this topic for an excellent discussion on the objectivity, reliability, authority of web sites

‗Pi‘ in the Old Testament:

“And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the

one brim to the other: it was round all about,

and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty

cubits did compass it about.” (I Kings 7, 23)

Mobius strip

Eternity scarf

Putting your

mathematical skilIs

to work

• Is it legal?

• Is it ethical?

Covers

Related nonfiction

Related fiction

Author

Movie

Another movie Discussion

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/mathmovies/ 84 holds!

Cross-curricular initiatives

Link to topic of ―bullying‖

Link to discussion of

―uniqueness‖

One By Kathryn Otoshi

#1 (One) By Vladimir Radunsk

Dissatisfied with its shape, a

triangle keeps asking the

local shapeshifter to add

more lines and angles until

it doesn't know which side

is up.

Plus discussion of dual

meaning of words

Fibonacci poems

„Count‟ vs. „non-count‟ nouns

Regular dodecahedron: a

polyhedron (solid with plane faces)

with 12 faces, each of which is a

regular pentagon

Finalist, 2006 Governor General‘s

Award for Fiction

Can you construct the

dodecahedron that links the

characters in the stories?

Data-mining

Probability

Predicting

Math and Information

Mathematics is at the heart of sharing, sorting and protecting information. Cryptography, bioinformatics and computational mathematics form the basis for manipulating the data that flows from system to system, stores medical records or compiles the Oxford English Dictionary.

~University of Waterloo promotional brochure

Some very inspiring stories:

John Charles Fields

Donald Coxeter

John Mighton

Eric Demaine

Ravi Vakil

A. K. Dewdney

Kim Rossmo

―When I was quite young, I believe no older than 11, I came across two books that would determine how I thought about mathematics for the next 20 years, until, at the age of 31, I found the confidence to return to school and start a degree in the subject. One book was a collection of science fiction from the local library. It contained a story about two children who construct a Mobius strip that enables them, by a process I unfortunately can‘t recall, to travel in time….Though I haven‘t reread the short story since I was a child, I would be surprised if it was well written, and even more surprised if the mathematics behind it was sound. But the story awoke a greater sense of wonder than I have felt reading anything since: from it I gained the conviction that mathematics was a magical subject that would allow me, once I had mastered it, to transcend the everyday.‖ (9)

~ Mighton, John. The Myth of Ability: Nurturing Mathematical Talent in Every Child. Toronto: Anansi, 2003.

John Mighton, a Canadian, is a mathematician, author (The Myth of Ability, The End of Ignorance), playwright (Governor General‘s Literary Award for Drama), actor (Good Will Hunting), and educator (JUMP)

~ http://jumpmath.org/about/mighton

Describes the life and work of Eratosthenes, the Greek geographer and astronomer who accurately measured the circumference of the Earth. While he is also known for the Sieve of Eratosthenes, he was a librarian at Alexandria, too.

―E‖ for ―everyone‖!

› But not at every time!

Concept books

› Read carefully!

A place for everything and everything in its place

Fibonacci Sequence

Is “a2 + b2 = c2” helpful?

Read the

instructions

Information literacy lesson › What is the issue/error?

› What correction is necessary?

› How does that make you feel about the remaining contents of the book?

› Who should we inform?

› What are their credentials?

› How can we contact them?

› Can we write our own story?

Take advantage of a ‗teachable moment‘

Math memories you can

count on : a literature-based

approach to teaching

mathematics in the primary

classrooms

By Jo-Anne Lake, 2007

Picturing math : hands-on

activities to connect math

with picture books

By Colleen Kessler , 2006

Numeracy and literacy :

teaching k-8 mathematics

using children's literature

By Robin A. Ward, 2007

Literacy + math =

creative connections in

the elementary

classroom

By Jennifer L. Altieri,

2010

Literature-based activities for

integrating mathematics with other

content areas (K-2, 3-5, 6-8)

By Robin A. Ward, 2008

Meeting the math

standards with favorite

picture books : lessons,

activities, and hands-on

reproducibles that help

you teach essential math

skills and concepts

By Bob Krech , 2002

What if your ABCs were

your 123s? :

building connections

between

literacy and numeracy

By Leslie Minton, 2007

New visions for linking

literature and mathematics

By David J. Whitin, Phyllis

Whitin, 2004

Connecting math with

literature : using children's

literature as a springboard

for teaching math concepts

grades 3-6

By Lisa Crooks, 2002

Math links : teaching the

NCTM 2000 standards

through children's

literature

By Evans, Leija, Falkner,

2001

Math through children's

literature

By Braddon, Hall, Taylor,

2000

Chart of children‘s

literature featured in Math

Solutions Publications series http://www.mathsolutions.com/do

cuments/lessons_chart-2.pdf

Math and Literature series

Math and Nonficton series http://www.mathsolutions.com/index.cfm?pag

e=wp18&contentid=112&crid=97&mcrid=108

Make sure material is accessible

Constantly promote

Out of sight, out of mind

Again, not trivial

Cross-curricular connections

Provide a positive, integrated experience with mathematics

Make sure to include teachers in this lesson

Where do you have it? Careful!

Something we

can all do

› Math-specific

› Incorporate

into other

themes

• Cardinal vs. ordinal

numbers

• Use of „math‟ terms in other

contexts

Kids love extreme numbers Link to Information Studies

o Story of name of Google, Googleplex o Facts about amount of ‗information‘

processed by Google every day • PageRank algorithm considers more

than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms

• Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services.

• Google processes over 20 petabytes of data per day

Googol

10100

Books about ‗zero‘ and/or ‗nothing‘

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/images/0198321473/sr=1-4/qid=1233204892/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=916520&s=books&qid=1233204892&sr=1-4

Klarreich, Erica. "Crafty

geometry:

mathematicians are

knitting and crocheting

to visualize complex

surfaces." Science

News 23 Dec. 2006:

411+. Academic

OneFile. Web. 30 Jan.

2011.

Black History Month

Valentine‘s Day

• Story of Polly Nomial

and Curly Pi

We facilitate school-wide literacy

programs, so…

Books

Sites › http://mathcentral.uregina.ca/RR/database/RR.09.95/danylczuk1.html › http://www.2learn.ca/mapset/enjoy/100days/100days.asp › http://www.gecdsb.on.ca/d&g/100thday.htm

http://www.worldmathday.com/

World Math Day Video Challenge (Teacher Tube) › http://www.teachertube.com/video.php?category=mv&chid=77

› Be the driving, coordinating force just as for Family Literacy Day http://www.abc-canada.org/en/family_literacy/family_literacy_day

In Australia, the government sponsors a combined National Literacy and Numeracy Week › http://www.literacyandnumeracy.gov.au/

Real World Math Contest (Teacher Tube + Texas Instruments)

Books

Sites › http://www.piday.org/

› http://www.edhelper.com/pi_day.htm?gclid=CLaH6druqpoCFQENDQodoUPuzg

› http://www.exploratorium.edu/pi/

Also Einstein‘s birthday!

Tesselations (Escher)

Origami › Read about Eric Demaine (Canadian now at MIT) › http://mathforum.org/library/results.html?style=power&textsearch=origami

Quilting

Fractals

Doodling http://www.maa.org/news/121407vakil.html

Golden Ratio/Divine Proportion (nature, art, architecture) › http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibInArt.html

Games day – learn about probability,

statistics, game theory, logic puzzles

“Play for Literacy” 2011 Family Literacy Day theme

http://abclifeliteracy.ca/en/family-literacy-day

Dress up as twins

Books about the number 2 and/or multiplying by 2

Books with ―two‖ in the title

See Carol Hurst ―Math and Children‘s Literature

http://www.carolhurst.com/subjects/math/librarymath.html