Great Idea For Teaching Money

Haroula is about to teach her Grade 1 students about how to add coins together.  She has found from past experience that sometimes the students have a hard time understanding that a coin that is smaller than a penny (a dime) is worth more than the penny.  So she created a number line system where the value of the coin (e.g, a dime) will go for exactly 10 spaces.  Therefore as the students line the coins up on the number line, it will tell them what the final total is.  Here are pictures of her great idea:

This is what the number line looks like.

An up close view of the first few numbers.

The picture of the dime goes ten spots on the number line.

The penny goes one spot - A dime + a penny = 11 cents.  It ends at 11 on the number line.

She used real clip art images for the coins and then used the paper cutter to cut out the coins.

This idea might seem a little time consuming, but once you have done it, I think it will help save you a lot of time teaching the concept of adding and subtracting money amounts.  I will put the template up on the FOS Wiki.  Thank you to Haroula for sharing this great idea!

Math Campp - Day 3 & 4

For Wednesday and Thursday the focus moved from Proportional Reasoning to Patterning and Algebra.  We were treated to the lovely pair of Cathy Bruce and Ruth Beatty.  Ruth instructs at Lakehead University and Cathy at Trent University.  The main focus of their research is young students and their algebraic thinking. 

From the moment they began their plenary session, we were hooked!  They showed us a method for teaching patterning and algebra that may of us were unfamiliar with.  And yet, it is so simple and so hands on, that the learning for those of us in the room skyrocketed!  In fact, many of us can't wait to get back to the classroom to try it out.  The underlying concept of additive and multiplicative thinking is what really helps students gain not only more confidence when "doing" the math, but also makes a big difference as it shows us if they really have the conceptual knowledge they need in order to move forward as mathematicians.

Look at this photo below.  (It is upside down, so please read it from right to left).  Can you tell me what equation this model represents?

1n + 9  (where n=term) or position number x 1 +9

The first position is "Zero" - There are 9 green tiles.  If you look at the 9 green tiles they show up in every term.  Therefore, the 9 must be the constant.  Just by the pure look of it, the students are now more successful in identifying the constant.

The second position is "One" - You can see the 9 green tiles (the constant) but now there is 1 blue cube.  Hmm....what times "one" gives me one?  students can now begin to make conjectures about what they think the pattern rule is.  They can then look to the third position and see if that it is always "position number times 1".

The third position is "Two" - Two times one is two (hence the two little blue cubes). And then once again there are those 9 constant green tiles.

Here is another example:

Can you see it?  This one is a little more tricky, but you can probe the students with some questions like "What do you notice is the same about each position?"  "Is there any pattens that you notice?"  In fact, you can even use different colour tiles to lay on top of the pattern to help the students test their theories and prove and reason their conjectures.  What's the answer you ask?

4n + 5  (where n=term number)  or position number x 4 +5

Once we started doing these, we then made the jump to graphing the equations and predicting about what the "12th term would be" using graphing and our knowledge of co-ordinate points. 

Great stuff to think about!