Family Reunion

1.) The story “Family Reunion” by Bonnie Bader begins with a young boy (the main character) being woken up by his mother at 7:00am on a Saturday and he is wondering why she is waking him up so early even though he doesn’t have any school. His mother reminds him that this Saturday in particular was the Graff Family Reunion and he doesn’t want to go at all! He tries to come up with numerous excuses but none of them work with his mother. They arrive at Aunt Molly’s house for the Reunion. Trying to avoid his family he looks around for a spot to do his homework. He finds a spot under a tree to do his math homework about graphs! While his mother and his aunt discuss the temperature for the reunion he finds the idea for his first graph, the temperature and time.  After his mother tells him to enjoy the party a little he gets his idea for the second graph which is how many people take certain types of food. He counted how many people take Potato Salad, Coleslaw, or Macaroni Salad. While he began to get his own food his mind began to race again for another graph. This time he would graph how many people used napkins, their sleeves, or the back of their hands. Ignoring his family as he continued to work on his graphs some of his cousin’s come up to him. They also love math and join him in his graph making adventure. They deicide to then graph the hair colors of the family. As he finishes up his graphs his mother tells him its time to go and he’s really bummed! Even though he didn’t want to attend another Graff Family Reunion he ended up not only getting to know his family as a whole better through his data collected but he also got his math homework done!!

2.) The mathematical concept presented in "Family Reunion" is the idea of graphs. Not only is it the idea of graphs but the book provides starting with the idea for the graph, collecting the data, maintaining the data, then finalizing it into an appealing final product. The main character begins with an idea such as how many people will take a certain food at the reunion. He then collects his data by watching his family members take certain foods. Then after he collects and maintains his data he finally put it all into a graph with his coloring utensils. This book did a very good job at exemplifying and illustrating the process of making a graph in a very easy way with a story line along with it.

3.) Literature is a good way to explain a mathematical concept because of how easy it is to attach a storyline to a concept like graphing. I believe literature is an easier way of explaining a concept rather than a bunch of numbers on a board you can apply the concept to a real life situation which makes it easier to understand.