Money Unit

For our money unit, we had the chance to go over various important elements. For example, we discussed the “coins of Canada” where the students learned about the nickel, dime, loonie and toonie, and we even spent some time on the penny. Throughout the unit the students progressed by learning how identify the different coins by their number or emblem. We also moved on to skip counting with coins, by 5s (nickels), 10s (dimes), 25s (quarters) and so on. The grade 1s focused on skip counting by 5s and 10s and the grade 2s were able to start with the 25s and loonies.

The images you have attached to this post demonstrate some of the money unit centres I created for the students.

Centre 1 = using fake coins to make the total requested on the plastic mat. EX: create 25 cents. If they were done all of the 5 totals, I would ask them to do it again but showing it in a different way.

Centre 2 = there were 50 cards on the table with coins printed on them, each student in the centre was given a white board with boxes indicating a card number. They had to pick up a card and determine the answer to the questions. EX: Card #17 asks: how much money is shown? *the students would then determine the total amount of money and write it in box #17 on their dry erase card.

Centre 3 = Roll the dice. There were 2 big dice (red & yellow) and on them, I replaced what was already written with stickers with new directions. The students were given fake coins and they were asked to show what was being asked of them on the dice. Once they showed me with the coins, they were to draw it out on a white paper so that I could pick it up afterwards.

The culminating task of the money unit was my favourite one so far. I was really upset when COIVD hit and I wasn’t able to see it through. Each of the students were given a piggy bank on their desk. This piggy bank was a spot for them to collect coins throughout the day/week.

In order to earn coins for their piggy banks, the students were asked to complete certain tasks. Some tasks were simple like “raise your hand to speak” and others were a little more complex. We created an anchor chart that indicated what each task was worth and posted it on the board for the students to be reminded of what they should do. If they were asked to do something more than twice, we had permission to remove a coin from their bank.

In order to put these coins into play, we also created a classroom store (see pictures attached). At the end of each week, the students were asked to count the total coins they had in their piggy banks and were allowed to purchase an item from the store, if they had the funds to do so. Each item had a different value depending on the interest of the students and its actual value. The students would bring over their banks and count their coins with me (demonstrating their learning) and then get to pick an item. They also had the choice to wait and save their money for the following week, if they wanted to save up for something more expensive.

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