Journal of the Mathematics Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association
Volume 49 Issue 2, June 2012
56 – 60
Hungry Ants Explore Multiplication
Caitlin Dickinson
Looking back at my own experiences as an elementary mathematics student, I recall so many fellow students asking the inevitable question: “Why do we have to learn this?” Such a question was inevitably followed by the bold statement, ”We’ll never use this in real life!” The challenge that my own teachers faced was to convince my classmates and me that the concepts we studied in class were valuable and relevant; in particular, they searched for ways to engage us to prevent us from giving up before we’d begun. Literature can be an ideal medium through which students can personally connect to mathematics because it can provide interesting context for a problem and help students look at mathematics in a broader way.
