Elevator Magic

Murphy, S. (1997). Elevator Magic. HarperCollins.

In this book, subtraction is practiced as Ben and his mom ride the elevator from the 10th floor. Elevator Magic would not only be a good book for substitution, but also a good way for students to brush up on their math language. Math Start has a fabulous collection of books. The series teaches math concepts in a way that children find engaging and adults do not find boring. The website is wonderfully organized and offers many resources. Take a look! Math Start Books

Elevator Magic Lesson
Standard: K-2 The student will demonstrate through the mathematical processes an emerging sense of quality and numeral relationships, sets, and place values.

Indicator: K-2.4 Represent simple joining and separating situations through 10.

Materials:
Beans, 10 for each student

Elevator Magic

Math Journals

Procedures:
1. To begin the lesson, the teacher will ask the students to line up 10 beans on their desk. The teacher will tell the students to have the beans going vertically, or up and down.
2. The teacher will do a picture walk using Elevator Magic to introduce the book to the students.
3. The teacher will explain to the students that each of their beans represents a level on the elevator.
4. The teacher will read the story and stop at each page that involves Ben and his mom moving to another floor. The students will remove a bean from their own elevator line to match that of the story. It would be helpful for visual learners if the teacher also had a bean elevator on an Elmo as she read the story.
5. As an assessment, the teacher could have the students write (or draw) their favorite subtraction sentence from Elevator Magic in their math journals.