Dr Brian Williamson

Comic Maths: Sue: Fantasy-based Learning for 4, 5 and 6 Year Olds Dr Brian Williamson

Comic Maths: Sue (Key Stage 1, Level 1) has been created for children by reporting on children?s own mathematical language, ideas and reasoning. It supports the National Curriculum and fantasy-based learning by using story-lines, comic characters and crazy situations in an attempt to embed mathematics into children?s? everyday lives. Sue helps you to count clouds and hiccups, colour in some crazy aliens, make pictures out of footballs, whiz around like a number 8, have fun with Charlie the Monkey, draw the next fluffy cloud sheep, see who has the longest nose, make time go crazy, fight with a card board box and be a very very silly person! The book is organized as a series of 10 short comics. There are extension activities corresponding to each comic in ?Extra Sums for Greedy People?. ?Crazy Baby? pages aim to get us to gaze out of the widow and think crazy thoughts! Story-line pages aim to keep things a bit real and to lead the reader through the book. ?Answers in The Back? gives answers to the questions set in each comic, the extension activities, and to the ?Crazy Baby? thoughts. Six ideas for using this book:- 1. Act it out! Make costumes for the Comic Maths characters and put on a Theatre in Education Comic Maths Show. Each comic could be a short maths sketch. Act out Anne, John and Sue travelling though the comic adventures, finding a flower with only one petal, counting aliens, making pictures out of footballs, whizzing round like a number 8, meeting Charlie the Monkey, Betty the fortune teller and more! 2. The author has illustrated this book using line-drawings so why not use Comic Maths as a colouring book. Then visit the story-line pages that link the comics, colour them in as well and then find your way into a comic or two! 3. Use Comic Maths as a learning support resource. Look up those areas of the curriculum recently covered at school and see if Comic Maths can help. 4. Use Comic Maths as a home-schooling resource. 5. Show your young friend the exercises in ?Extra Sums for Greedy People!? observe their response and use this information to assess their learning needs. 6. Just leave it around and see what happens!