Studying Money: Classroom Activities
Money is interesting to most students, it’s an inescapable part of adult life, and it lets you study a lot of math and economics concepts, so it makes a great classroom theme — or just grab a few of these activities to knock out some framework requirements.
Need a bulletin board? U.S. Money Bulletin Board Set from Trend is clear and straightforward, showing coins and currency and their relationships, while Teacher Created Resources U.S. Money Mini Bulletin Board focuses primarily on equivalencies. Carson-Dellosa’s U.S. Money Bulletin Board Set has a chart and pieces showing both bills and coins.
Understanding U.S. money
First students need to be able to identify coins accurately, understand the place value issues of coins and currency, and recognize the value of various combinations of bills and change. Just as digital clocks have made it harder for kids to learn to tell time with analog clocks, changes in shopping have made it harder for kids to learn about money. Few elementary students today have ever seen someone count back change, fewer have run to the corner store with a $5 bill in hand to pick up a carton of milk, and many kids now get their allowance through PayPal or debit cards.
Here are some classroom activities that let kids get the money practice they might not be getting at home:
- Fair trade Have students work in pairs with classroom money. The first student offers a combination of bills and coins, and the second student must match the value. Students who need to work on recognizing coins can use the same combination exactly, while those who know the names and values of coins should have to come up with a different combination that produces the same value.
- Making change Have students use a Teaching Cash Register or a cash drawer to make change for items “bought” from catalogs. Bring mail order catalogs to class, give each student a One Hundred Dollar Bill, and let them take turns running the register and shopping.
- Draw it Have students draw items they’d like to buy and draw bills and coins totaling the price they’d pay. Have them label the drawing with “I’d pay $___ for a ____.” While you could use a cents sign, bear in mind that modern keyboards no longer have this sign, so it might be more practical for students to get used to $.01.
The value of money
Knowing that a nickel is equal to five cents is necessary, but it doesn’t really tell you the value of that nickel. Money is only worth what it can buy. Kids whose experience of shopping with parents is putting things in a cart and swiping a card may not be conscious of the relationship between goods and cash.
Try some activities that make it clear:
- Big plans Plan a class party, a trip to a fun destination, or another big event. As a class, brainstorm the things needed for the trip. Use ads from newspapers or catalogs or do internet research to find the prices for all the items needed. For older students, divide the class into teams and compete to see who can bring in the lowest total.
- Budgeting Have students create a household budget. A typical budget recommendation is 28% for housing and 15% for food, 15% for transportation and 10% for savings. That leaves a mere 32% for clothing, entertainment, insurance, medical costs, gifts, charitable giving, and everything else. Imagine a person making minimum wage at a full time job and have the class do the math. Have older students use classifieds from the local paper or online research to determine what kind of housing, transportation, etc. their sample budget would pay for.
- Global view Use Peter Menzel’s eye-opening books Material World: A Global Family Portrait and Hungry Planet: What the World Eats to get a clearer understanding of how much money people have in different parts of the world. Use Google Earth to make virtual visits to the homes of the people you learn about.
What Comes Next?
“What comes next?” is a deceptively simple question. Identifying a series and predicting what comes next is a critical thinking skill that lets us test comprehension of a wide range of math concepts — and one which we use as adults in reading, planning, and decision making as well.
Use craft sticks and chart stickers to create “What Comes Next?” games or centers customized for your classroom, or have students make “What Comes Next?” puzzles for each other.
It’s very easy. Use stickers on one side of a craft stick to establish a pattern. End with a question mark. Turn the stick over and add the next item in the series so the puzzle will be self-checking.
Here we have groups of pink stickers in simple patterns: one sticker, two stickers, one sticker, two stickers… Other sticks show [one, two, one, one, two] and [one, two, three,one, two, three], and so on.
You can use chart stickers to match your current classroom theme, or put all your leftover chart stickers into a box and pull it out for this project.
Use numbers of items, colors, right and left facing stickers, different items, or any concept or pattern you’re working on in class.
Stickers make this fun for younger students, but you can also create puzzles with numbers or expressions. Have students work out puzzles for one another. The steps are simple:
- Decide on an action that can be taken on any number. This could be “add 3″ or “multiply by 2 and add 1″ or “subtract the preceding number” or “multiply by the final digit of the preceding number” — anything at all.
- Choose a beginning number and write it on the left of the stick.
- Apply the action to that number to create the next number in the sequence. Repeat this step several times.
- End with a question mark.
- Flip the stick and write the next number in the sequence. You could also give the rule, such as “n-3,” and write that on the back (answer side) of the stick.
When students have completed their puzzle sticks, have them trade and work to figure out one another’s puzzles. Add an element of competition by allowing students to keep the puzzle sticks they solve and return those that stump them.
Alternatively, keep the puzzle sticks in a pencil cup, pocket chart, or shoe box for fast finishers to solve — and let them create more, too.
Teaching Fractions
A recent report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel recommended that we as a nation get it together when it comes to teaching fractions. They didn’t phrase it quite like that, but they singled out fractions as an essential area in math that isn’t being taught successfully, and must be. It is, according to the panel, one of the big three topics that should be completely mastered in K-8. It also serves as an example for one practice the panel particularly abhors: revisiting a topic year after year “without closure” — that is to say, we teach it every year and some of the kids never get it.
Fractions can be a real source of frustration in the classroom. On the one hand, they are essential, not just for more advanced math tasks in students’ future math classes, but for daily life. We don’t really have the option of saying that some of the kids will master fractions and some won’t.
On the other hand, they are abstract enough and counterintuitive enough that, really, some of the kids will find it easy to master fractions and some won’t.
It seems unlikely that 1/2 would be larger than 1/3, when you first hear that. The process for multiplying fractions seems implausible. Fractions, one teacher told me when we were discussing her own experiences in trying to master them as a child, look spiky and weird and intimidating.
How can we overcome these obstacles? Especially when we have students in upper elementary or middle school who have been trying to grasp fractions for years, and despair as soon as they see them? Here are some things that might help:
Make them concrete.
Even students who seem otherwise too old for manipulatives should have them when they study fractions. Manipulatives add a multisensory component to your teaching, allow you to set up centers, and increase students’ comfort levels. We recently heard complaints that “manipulatives take too much time,” but we say that it’s quicker to help students learn thoroughly once than to review ten times because they didn’t grasp it. Some of our favorites are these:
- Fraction Squares I like the overhead ones for ordinary classroom use. Since the pieces are translucent, students can lay 1/4 pieces over 1/2 pieces and clearly see the relationship. In fact, these pieces can really make the whole notion of equivalent fractions click. There are also circle and triangle versions of this useful resource.
- Pizza Fractions Click the link for a really nice magnetic set to use on the board. We like the Learning Resources Pizza Fraction Fun Game, but the cardstock ones are a good start, too, and inexpensive enough that you can pass out a full set of eight to each student for practice. Teacher’s Friend Pizza Fractions! Bulletin Board is a good complement.
- Cuisenaire Rods are different-colored rods of different lengths. Ten of the shortest pieces equal one of the longest. You can lay the three-unit rod next to the ten-unit rod to see 1/3. Cuisenaire rods come in wood or plastic, hook-together or plain, and bring fractions down to their simplest form. One plus for this venerable standby is the wide range of books that use them, so you can always find new ideas.
- Base Ten Blocks are a big favorite of mine among math manipulatives, because you can literally use them for everything from counting through algebra. You can use them as you would Cuisenaire rods, but they are designed for working with larger numbers, so 49/50 or multiplying fractions will work with these, too.
Make them natural.
Fractions are not used as much in daily life (once we get past casual uses of ”half” and “a quarter”) as decimals. But they are used. Take opportunities to use fractions in the contexts in which students see them used outside of the classroom. Recipes, building, sewing, and music all use fractions. Build a bird feeder, increase a favorite recipe to feed the whole class, or plan a quilt. Keep track of all the occasions on which fractions are used and show them in your Fractions Pocket Chart. Just taking the opportunity to say “That’s 5/8 of an inch wide — let’s show that in our pocket chart” gives you a starting point for the next fraction lesson.
Make them fun.
Games with fractions may not be what you usually do with your spare time, but they’re not hard to find. Using games in the classroom allows you to keep student attention on a single concept longer than drilling, keeps students who have caught on engaged until the others catch up, and provides motivation.
- Scholastic’sMath Games to Master Basic Skills: Fractions & Decimals has a number of quick and easy games for practicing fractions. Bingo and Tic-Tac-Toe frames are in the book ready to copy, as are multiple pages of fraction and decimal “cards” which fit the squares of those frames. You can use the cards for concentration or follow the directions to make checkers boards of construction paper using the cards.
- Frog Pond Fractions is a ready-made game suited to younger students. Students collect fractional pieces throughout the game, aiming to make a whole. This is how the popular game Trivial Pursuit is scored, too. Develop the habit, when playing games in class, of indicating scores not by counting, but by filling in parts of a pie.
- Fill in the parts of a pie with Fraction Fun, too. This is an interactive online game in which players see a pie with some parts highlighted. Type in the correct fraction and you get a point. Since 2/4, 3/6, and 1/2 are all treated alike, this can be a good review of equivalent fractions.
- BBC fraction games address a number of different fraction skills, including putting fractions in order by size identifying the largest possible fraction, and more.
Some students will find fractions challenging, even when we follow the suggestions of the National Math Advisory Panel and offer math instruction in an organized and systematic way. But making fractions concrete, natural, and fun can help.
Healthy Kids Lesson Plans
President Kennedy said that physical fitness is not only important for physical health, but that it is also “the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” Still, we know that many of our students (and maybe even some of us) aren’t making the lifestyle choices that lead to optimum health and fitness. Try a lesson that looks at some of those choices.
This lesson begins with infograpics. You might want to start with our Infographics Lesson Plans, using the health-related infographics offered here as the starting point.
Start by printing or projecting this infographic and sharing it with your class:
Brought to you by MAT@USC Masters in Teaching
Discuss the infographic and list the facts your class finds surprising. Did they realize that so few kids eat vegetables and exercise? Did they know that babies drink soda? Were they aware of the consequences of these lifestyle choices?
Check out a few more infographics on kids and health:
- School lunches and nutrition
- Vegetables and Physical Activity (not for kids especially, but these are probably the most important changes kids can make)
- Changing eating patterns
- Balanced meals
- Fruit drinks
Divide the class into four groups. Ask each group to come up with a healthy change they’d be willing to make. Examples:
- Cutting out soda
- Using the new MyPlate system
- Having 4-6 servings of vegetables every day
- Getting 30 minutes of activity every day
- Cutting out candy
If you have students who are not ready to make changes, ask them to serve as the control group for the class study.
Determine as a class how you’ll measure the difference in each group’s health. All groups must use the same metric for accuracy. Possibilities:
- Number of school days missed because of illness
- Perceived energy levels (have students write how great they feel, from 1 to 10, on a slip of paper each day at the same time and collect the slips for each group in a jar)
- Heart rate tests before and after the study
Give each group a box with a slit in the top, like a piggy bank. Every day, students should anonymously write “Yes, did it” or “No, not today” and put their slip into the box. This will allow you to determine whether the groups made their planned changes or not. If the majority of the slips say “no,” then that group can’t be said to have made their change.
Hve your class continue with their changes for three weeks. Encourage students, share news about fitness and health, and keep up with any measurements you planned on during the study. At the end of the three weeks, analyze the data:
- Count “yes” and “no” slips for each group, and eliminate any group that has a majority of “no” slips.
- Take and count the agreed upon measures for all the groups.
- Compare the group results.
- Create your own class chart, infographic, or other presentation about the results of your study.
21 days is long enough to creatre a habit. Discuss with the students whether they plan to keep up with the change now that the study is over.
Ancient Mesopotamia Lesson Plans
Mesopotamia, meaning “between the rivers,” was the cradle of civilization. Explore the people who lived here thousands of years ago with a couple of our favorite Mesopotamia lesson plans. These two lessons are designed to give a sense of time and place for ancient Mesopotamia, while integrating critical thinking, math, and social studies goals.
Books for this study:
- DK Eyewitness Books: Mesopotamia
- Gilgamesh the King
- You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Sumerian Slave!: A Life of Hard Labor You’d Rather Avoid
Online resources:
- The British Museum has an interactive site with extensive basic information and images.
- University of Chicago‘s interactive site
- Mr. Donn’s Mesopotamia
- Discover Babylon game
- LookLex timeline
Economics: Needs and Opportunities
The area called Mesopotamia is a stretch of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers:
Have students identify this area on modern maps and list the nations that currently exist in this area.
In 3100 BC, when people in Mesopotamia began writing, people had already lived there for a long time. The Sumerians lived there some 7500 years ago, and the Assyrians, Babylonians, and ancient Persians were among the other civilizations that made this part of the world their home. The region became part of the Roman Empire in 114 or so. Later the Ottoman Turks controlled the area, and it has been part of Iraq since 1932.
It was a good place to live all that time because it allowed people to meet their basic needs. Try our Cookie Geography lesson to make this point. Have students cut the shape of your state from gingerbread (there’s a recipe at the link), use icing to show the rivers or other bodies of water, and add chocolate chips to show the major cities. You’ll find that the oldest, largest cities are nearly always on the water, and usually on a river. Discuss the ways in which rivers satisfy basic human needs for food, water, and transportation. Then look at the map of Mesopotamia and note how the rivers made it a good place to live.
Older students can research the weather in the area. They’ll find that there was regular rainfall and predictable growing seasons, a set of circumstances which encouraged agriculture. While hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants will produce enough food to sustain life, agriculture is a more reliable and efficient way to produce food.
Propose this as a hypothesis and have students figure out how they can support or reject it. For example, they might compare the amount of food produced by wild plants with the amount produced by cultivated plants. They might calculate the amount of time searching for 1,000 calories of wild foods would take, compared with the amount of time required to produce 1,000 calories of food from a garden. They could estimate the amount of fish or game an individual with simple tools such as a spear or net could bring home in a day, compared with the amount of food a day’s farming could produce.
Once students are convinced that agriculture is an efficient means of satisfying people’s need for food, point out that the rise of agriculture allowed specialization. If all the people have to spend most of their time coming up with food, they won’t have the leisure to develop other special talents. If fewer people can be farmers and produce enough food for all, then some people can work on pottery, metalcrafting, and even just coming up with ideas for useful things like ships and calendars.
This is what happened in Mesopotamia. With enough leisure to specialize, people came up with writing, laws, new forms of transportation, government, and other technologies. The rivers allowed trade with other growing civilizations, bringing new goods and also new ideas to the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians who lived there.
Have students use resources like Material World: A Global Family Portrait to identify nations or areas where much of people’s attention has to be devoted to basic survival. Compare the level of specialization in careers in these places with that in more affluent nations. Use this information to develop context for a discussion about how the natural resources and climate of Mesopotamia influenced the history of the societies there. The resources linked above will provide background information.
Play Civilization or any other history simulation game and discuss how the game’s creators have tried to replicate the effects of differing access to resources.
Alternatively, have students use Google Earth with cities and building layers turned off to identify good places for building a civilization. They could imagine that they are beings from another planet coming to what they think is an uninhabited earth and choosing a likely spot to form a colony. Have students create a Google Earth Tour to show the places they recommend to their commander back on their home planet.
Calendars
Mesopotamia is the home of mathematics. People began to count, using their fingers and thus coming up with a base 10 system of arithmetic. They also developed a calendar. At first, they divided their years by agricultural events, deciding that a new year would begin with the barley harvest in what we would now call May and June. Events like the time to plant could be identified as a fairly regular and predictable time. This led to the development of the 360 day year.
360 is a tidy number that can be divided in many ways. We still divide a circle into 360 degrees, and Math Forum has an interesting discussion of this fact which includes Mesopotamia’s relationship to it. Have students draw or cut big circles and divide them into 360 days– and they’ll notice a striking resemblance to an analog clock, which has 60 minutes, each with 60 seconds.
360 divided by 12 gives 30, roughly the number of days in a month measured by the changes of the moon. And it takes just about 360 days for the earth to circle the sun, so it seemed to be a pretty good length of time for a year.
It’s not perfect, though. After some years of using this base 60 calendar, people would find that the harvests weren’t falling at “harvest time” any more. Various lunar and solar calendars were used in different places, and then the Julian calendar became popular in much of the world. It has largely been replaced by the Gregorian calendar, which has been in use in the United States since September of 1752.
Students can find a lot of detail about various calendars at Calendar FAQ.
There is a new proposed calendar called the Hanke-Henry Calendar which would have 30 days in each month and then have an extra week every few years.
Divide students into groups and assign each one a particular calendar from the links above. Have each group prepare a timeline showing an overview of the history of Mesopotamia using their assigned calendar. Compare the various timelines.
Finish up by determining how a change of calendar might affect your lives. For example, the new Hanke-Henry calendar would put an end to Hallowe’en as we know it, and what would we do with the extra week in 2015?
Add all the Mesopotamian information you’ve discovered to your classroom timeline and map.
Infographics Lesson Plans
Infographics are trendy, and they’re also an efficient and appealing way of sharing information. Next time you study graphs and charts, include infographics as well.
Read infographics
Begin with my collection of animal infographics at Pinterest, or your own classroom collection. Go through them and discuss what information each one offers. Ask students what makes these pictures infographics rather than just charts or illustrations.
Once all students understand the idea of infographics, ask them to create their own collection. Remind students that infographics are protected under copyright law, just like photos and illustrations. Older students can get some practice with citing sources by providing references for their collections.
Have students work in pairs to identify the characteristics of infographics that make them different from ordinary graphs. Regroup and share the answers. Some of the things students might notice:
- Infographics use visual elements to make an idea clear.
- Infographics may combine different types of graphs and charts into a single image.
- Infographics use more words than a typical chart or graph would.
Have students choose an infographic and write a sentence or a paragraph that clearly states its main point or points.
Create infographics
Some infographics are just graphs with visual elements to make their point clearer, so why not start with a bar graph that uses visual elements to make its point?
Bar graphs are best for data that you can count and compare, so start with data you’ve been studying. Prepare a regular bar graph. Replace the ordinary bars with pictures related to your topic.
Our example was made very simply. First we made a chart at Create a Graph as a starting point. We asked the class which area of the Ancient World they liked best and put the data into the Create a Graph form, and the tool created a bar graph for us.
We captured it as a picture and loaded it into Adobe Photoshop. We replaced the bars with photos of things that made us think of the different areas of the ancient world. We had taken most of the photos ourselves at museums, but we did use a copyright-free image from Dover for one of our pictures. Using a graphic program for this project gives good practice with the computer, but using scissors and glue works just as well.
Once students have made their bar graph, have them try to make a Venn diagram or pie chart with images relevant to their data. Here’s a Venn diagram comparing two Cinderella-inspired picture books:
Have older students take their data another step away from an ordinary graph:
We played around with more of the tools from Adobe Photoshop to make our graph into an infographic.
More things to do with data for an infographic project:
- Include more than one type of graph.
- Use a graphic shape to hold the information.
- Change the shape or direction of the graph.
We’d love to see what your class comes up with!
