Money, Money, Money

Do you teach money?

Money is one of my favorite math units to teach because you can make so many real life connections. And, kids love to talk about money!

Oddly, money is not included in the first or third grade Common Core standards. I say oddly for two reasons:

1. It is a 2nd grade standard. The standard expects that kids already know the coins, their names, and their values. 2nd graders need to solve word problems about money, which means they need to know the names and values of the coins!

2. Understanding money is key to financial literacy. If we are truly preparing students for their lives beyond the classroom, I think we should have a stronger focus on money throughout elementary school (and really, all the grade levels). Students shouldn’t just get a brief exposure to it for one small 2nd grade unit and then expect to have mastered money, especially as we live in an increasingly cashless society. Students are not getting the opportunities to see, touch, and use physical money outside of math very often when everyone is paying with credit cards, debit card, Venmo, and Apple Pay.

So here’s what I do in my classroom to help my students.

1. We make a Money Book. It’s really simple-we glue pictures of each coin (front and back) under the coin’s name and we write in the value of each coin. I have my students keep those money books on their tables throughout the unit so they can refer to them often.

2. Hands-on! We have plastic versions of the US coins in our math manipulatives, so I divide them into snack containers with lids (I get them at the Dollar Tree in packs of 4) and set them out for kids to use in partners.

   On the first or second day of learning about money, we dump out the coins and kids work with their partners to sort the coins. I’ve done a lot of different activities around this-we’ve graphed how many nickels each pair of students has (for some reason I have a TON of nickels, way more than any other coin), we’ve skip counted nickels and dimes, we practice making a dollar using all nickels/all dimes/all quarters.

   I really make an effort to give them a lot of exploration time with the coins the first day or two. This helps with the novelty of a new manipulative and it helps the students to start getting familiar with what each coin looks like.

3. Problem Solving. Now it’s time to dive in and start using our coins to count and solve. I will show them a set of coins on my document camera and ask them to make the same set with their coins. Then we practice counting to find the total value. (This is a great way to incorporate visual analysis into your math teaching too!) I’ll show them a set of coins and they have to write the total value on their whiteboards.

   I also like to show them a set of coins and once we determine the value I tell them to find another combination of coins to make the same value. Again, we’re working with visual analysis and students are thinking both critically and creatively.

   This flows right into solving money word problems. I’ll display a task card with a basic money word problem and then have my students partner talk to decide how they’d solve the problem. So for example, I might show a word problem like: Owen has 2 quarters, 3 dimes, and 8 pennies in his pocket. How much money does he have? Once they’ve partner talked, we share out whole group, and then we solve it together. We’ll do a few similar problems to build up their confidence in their skills.

   Money Word Problems FREEBIE!

4. Word Problems Galore! Now it is time to get into more complex word problems, incorporating multiple steps and different types of thinking. Again, we’ll start off partner talking, sharing out whole group, and then I will model how I solved the problem.

   So one example of a complex problem could be: Veronica has 4 dimes, 3 nickels, 1 quarter, and 7 pennies. She wants to buy a treat that costs 75cents, but her sister says she does not have enough money. Do you agree with her sister? Explain why or why not.

   This is a much more complex word problem than just finding the total value of coins, and involves more strategic thinking, but it is more often the type of problem they’ll be asked to solve on standardized tests. And it’s very real world-oriented (I want to buy something. Do I have enough money? How do I know?) Students need to be taught how to think about complex word problems and be given a lot of exposure and practice with them.

5. Open Ended Problem Solving. I used to struggle with Open Ended Math Tasks (also known as high ceiling, low floor tasks because they have multiple ways for students to be successful and multiple ways for students to extend their thinking), but with practice I’m getting more proficient at using them in my classroom. One great way to begin is to ask students to come up with multiple ways to make $1. You can put limitations on it to increase the rigor (Make $1 without using any quarters. Make $1 using an odd number of coins. Make $1 using only two types of coins.) which also incorporates conditional thinking. Or you can change the total amount-have kids make $1.80 or $5 or $3.50. There’s a lot you can do without any real prep to help further your students’ thinking and skills with money. If you’re teaching money in March, I have a fun St. Patrick’s Day-themed money project in my TPT store.

Click here for Money Math Resources

So, what do you think? Leave me a comment and let’s chat about teaching money!