Experiences

Maths to read and not only…

Veronica Del Bene

Italy

Vocational School

Maths

Teaching in class, Extracurricular activity

Direct, Indirect

Among the main causes for student failure to learn maths there is surely poor motivation and the mistaken belief that maths is an abstract discipline which is useless, of little interest and above all, boring. For the dual purpose of getting students used to scientific readings and to show them a mathematics which is somewhat different from that which is usually described and dealt with in textbooks, and which is capable of sparking interest and curiosity in them, at the end of the previous academic year I decided to suggest to the second, third and fourth year students that they read an educational maths text during the summer holidays. I gave my students a list of twenty books, novels, short stories, essays (with corresponding links to sites that describe the plot and give engaging reviews), among which they had to choose, in absolute freedom, the title that interested them most. It was a real and genuine challenge: to make the students of a vocational high school read, during the summer, a maths book! After the holidays I asked them to submit a written report of the book they had read, a report which was then, in the course of succeeding months, discussed in class using a Power Point presentation. Not all have given reports on their books but the results that have already been obtained are enough to affirm that, on the whole, it was a positive experience. Many students, though emphasising the difficulties encountered in the reading, have commented that they were deeply interested and had enjoyed themselves (had fun).
“I found this crime novel exciting and I think it is an excellent book to revive curiosity in maths”, commented Angela, for example, on the book La Formula del Professore (Y. Ogawa). “Personally, I would have never chosen it voluntarily as a book to read, but after reading it, I would be the first to recommend it to any person who doesn’t have anything to do with maths at all. I found it original.”