Customer Reviews

A Fly on the Ceiling (Step-Into-Reading, Step 4)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This easy reader combines history, laughs and math. Teaching the Cartesian Coordinate System, this book lends itself to great classroom teaching and learning. Try having your kids or students play "Battleship" after reading!!Powerful illustrations too!Bravo!I bought a class set for my classroom!

AS a new teacher in 6th grade mathematics classrooms with wildly varying ability levels, I look for varied ways to present materials. Some of the children don't know how many minutes are in an hour, some are ready for algebra now. This book is a great quick read to introduce the coordinate plane. The kids who are struggling are grateful for a moment to catch their collective breaths and learn math at the same time. The kids who are breezing by appreciate the humor. It may have been written for a much younger audience, but it is clever enough to hold the attention of 12 year olds.

This is a GREAT children's math book. I always buy it as a gift for friends with kids and they love it too!

I bought this for a 3rd grade grandaughter. She loved reading it to her younger sister, but it was much too basic for her. She is in to chapter books, and this one didn't quite fit her skills.

This book seemed long and meandering. The illustrations were very good which is I gave it any stars at all. There were to many side stories that did not help the flow of the book such as, Decartes falling in the Seine and having soggy bread, getting sick, and needing to use paint on his floor instead of charcoal. It was choppy and the illustrations were the only funny part in the book.

Which of the following statements are true:
a) René Descartes invented the Cartesian coordinate system to track the movements of a fly on the wall.
b) René Descartes was messy.
c) René Descartes absentmindedly fell into the Seine.
d) None of the above.
The correct answer is "d)." Unfortunately, the author of this pseudo-biography, tells an engaging story, which incorporates all three statements. The fact behind the fiction is stated in the Author's Note section on the final page (48), where we learn the only two undisputable facts in the entire book: "...René Descartes made the Cartesian Coordinate System very popular. And he was a darn good philosopher, too." The remaining pages are filled with speculation. Although the illustrations are very good, and the book's explanation of the Cartesian coordinate system is comprehensible, it seems pointless to provide a fabricated story to a seven to nine-year-old child, to whom you must at some point say, "It isn't true."

A great book to read in the classroom, and given students a different view of the coordinate plane. Helps them to make sense of the reason behind what a coordinate plane does for organizing data.

I'm planning to use it with my class to teach them about coordinates.