Mentor Text Linky (math-division with remainders)

It's Sunday and time to link up with Collaboration Cuties for their awesome mentor text linky.  You have to check out the new page on their blog where they are organizing all the mentor texts linked up each week by subject!  What a wonderful tool for teachers to refer to.

The topic this week is math mentor texts.

I am linking up one of my favorite math mentor texts for 4th grade, 

A Remainder of One by Elinor J. Pinczes.  

In this book, there is a regiment of 25 beetles on a parade.  Their queen likes to keep things "tidy" and when the bugs march two by two, she notices that one bug doesn't have a partner.  The bug left out, "Joe", has to stand aside rather than be a remainder.  On the days that follow, Joe tries dividing the beetles into groups of 3 and 4, but it still doesn't work out.  He finally makes it work with groups of five!  The same beetles appear throughout the book and students love to "spot" certain beetles as they move through the text.  

The illustrations by Bonnie MacKain are colorful and full of energy.

Remainders are a difficult concept for my fourth graders and this helps them to realize what a "remainder" actually means.  This lends itself well to word problems when students must interpret the remainder for their answer.  

For example, when presented the problem, "There are 25 beetles lined up in 4 rows with the same number of beetles in each row.  How many beetles are in each row?", students are more likely to respond, "Six beetles are in each row with one left out!" rather than, "6 R1 beetles".  

Here is a video read aloud of the story on Teacher Tube!

Check back at Collaboration Cuties for all the other math mentor text link ups today!