Author Spotlight: Greg Tang

Today I want to introduce you to an incredible author, Greg Tang who was inspired to begin writing for children after tutoring math in his first grade daughter's class. His first book, The Grapes of Math, is a clever collection of puzzles and riddles that challenge students to look for patterns, combinations, and other strategies to solve math problems quickly and efficiently. Since then his series has expanded to a total of eight titles each of which is filled with clever verse and engaging puzzles and riddles.



Teaching Tip
Students will benefit from simply reading Tang's books and solving the riddles. You can extend the experience by having students write, illustrate and exchange their own puzzles and riddles. Post the student work in a school hallway for other students to enjoy.

One is a snail, Ten is a Crab

Author April Pulley Sayre has written a book that takes the classic "counting by feet" problem to a whole new level. Beautiful illustrations of beach scenes depict various sea creatures. In the beginning the reader is simply counting by the number of legs in each scene. After the initial introductions, we see different combinations of legs that help us count up to 100.

Teaching Tips:
The scenario lends itself to a rich problem-solving experience where student can write and exchange original problems based on the book characters. You can find other teaching ideas and sample student work related to this book in the Teaching Children Mathematics article, Legs, Legs, Legs by David and Phyllis Whitin. In my humble opinion David and Phyllis are the math and literature gurus and can always be counted on for rich ideas that work great in the classroom. I've included one of their teaching resources below.