- MW Penn with the children of Blackwater Community School, Arizona
MW Penn writes stories and poetry for young children to introduce them to the seminal ideas of mathematics.
Too often we associate mathematics with computation alone. Computation is an important part of math, but math encompasses so much more: problem solving; number; pattern; order; measurement; spatial relationships; symmetry. In addition, statistics, data analysis and graphing – tools necessary to remain informed citizens of a democracy – are part of its broad scope.
MW Penn’s first children’s book, Sidney the Silly Who Only Eats 6, won the Connecticut Press Club Communication Award for best children’s book of 2007. The theme of Sidney is ‘less than/greater than’, because the concept of number grows out of ideas about relationships between quantities. Sidney has an accompanying 108 page workbook, Math and Poetry Fun with Sidney the Silly and Friends.
Two additional books were published in the spring of 2009:
1) ADDverse I is the first in a series of books of poetry. It includes Farmer Yercle’s Circles, a young child’s introduction to the geometry of a circle and circle based solids, and Peter Pattern based on pattern recognition, an introduction to the iterative functions of algebra.
2) Filthy Franny and the 4 Faery Fleas is a jolly journey through the digits of the base 10 number system. Because Franny refuses to ‘go near a tub of water’, instead of a Faery Godmother the fates send her Freddy, Frankie, Frieda and Flo – the 4 Faery Fleas. Together they visit the lands of 0 through 9.
Penn has authored a series of six Pebble Books for Capstone Press. Four published in July of 2011 are on the topics of addition, subtraction, shape and pattern; two, on the concepts of money and comparison, are due in the spring of 2012.
MW Penn has published poems in several anthologies including the International Rotary Club literacy initiative, A World of Stories, and Caduceus from the Yale Press. Highlights for Children has published her poetry. See links under poetry.
As an active member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Penn presents sessions at state and regional meetings and has reviewed books and articles for NCTM publications. She presented sessions at the Associated Teachers of Mathematics in Connecticut (ATOMIC) conference in 2007, 2008 and 2009, and at the Ten County Mathematics Conference in New York in 2009, 2010 and 2011. In 2009 she presented sessions at both the Pennsylvania and Florida statewide NCTM affiliate conferences, and in 2010, in addition to returning to these conferences, she presented at the mid Atlantic regional meeting of NCTM in Baltimore on October 15 and at the New England regional meeting in New Hampshire on November 8. In 2011 Penn presented a session at the NCTM national convention in Indianapolis and is scheduled to present sessions at each of the three regional NCTM conferences: Atlantic City; St. Louis; and Albuquerque. She will also present a session and chair a panel on interdisciplinary study at the national conference of the National Council of Teachers of English in Chicago in November and host an author’s table at their books for children luncheon.
MW Penn visits classrooms and libraries to read her work and introduce children to the different, though related worlds of mathematics and poetry.
Dr. Edward Zigler, of the Zigler Institute for Child Development at Yale University and the ‘father’ of the Head Start program, said of her first book, “Penn’s creative use of rhyme and numbers is a model of how to help the young child begin the demanding tasks of mastering literacy and numeracy.” Dr. Maria Diamantis, President of National Council of Teachers of Mathematics New England, wrote of her work, “The integration of poetry and mathematics is awesome, captivating, and invites children to explore problem solving and number sense!” Duncan Robinson, CBE, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge University, wrote of ADDverse: “Penn is a Pied Piper; no child is able to resist the music of her numbers.”
Before writing books for children, Penn designed software systems for AT&T, the University of Florida and the FDA. Software documentation and manuals led to a career in technical writing; subsequently, Penn published over 50 magazine articles in the field of architectural stone.
Her interests, math and literature, are not separate worlds. Children love stories and they enjoy the patterns of verse; intrinsically, they enjoy math, too, though they might not recognize it: the meter of rap; the symmetry of a butterfly; the value of their allowance. Penn’s goal is to bring the disciplines together and make learning fun.
To schedule programs or class visits, please contact:
PatVita@cox.net