Using rich narratives to engage students in mathematics: A narrative-first approach

Setting students problem-solving tasks that are simultaneously engaging and mathematically important is central to primary mathematics instruction. Often an attempt to develop engaging tasks involves first determining the meaningful mathematics to be learnt, and then creating a ‘mini-narrative’ as a vehicle for exploring these concepts. However, in our experience, the more familiar, enjoyable and deeply developed the narrative, the more engaging the task is for students. Consequently, we demonstrate how there might be value in inverting the process- that is, beginning with rich narratives, and mapping on the mathematics- through creating mathematical tasks embedded in examples of well-known children’s literature. This is termed the Narrative-First Approach. We discuss one specific text – Fish Out of Water – and an associated mathematical investigation in some depth, including commenting on student work samples and student post-lesson reflections.