Mastering Money

This year I am in the summative teacher evaluation process so that means more observations...oh joy! Really it isn't too bad because I don't mind people coming in to observe. I've totally gotten past that. Well for my first formal observation of the year I chose the day before Thanksgiving break. Am I CrAzY?! Not only did I choose that day, but math is the last subject of the day so my principal was coming into observe me the last hour of the school day before a break. LUCKILY, it went well. Or maybe it's because I have great kids and a well organized classroom with routines in place. 

ANYWAY, I tell you all of this because this observation served as the start of a great week. My principal called me in to debrief with me about the lesson he saw. He thought it was outstanding and said he really enjoyed watching it. Whew! He had even made of point of recording the whole group and small group lesson so I had to tolerate watching myself on screen so that we could talk about specific parts of the lesson. Fun right? 

He stated that what he really enjoyed most was how I ran small group math and how the kids really get excited about their learning and the activities they work on. So I thought I would share some of the things we worked on in math this week. 

I spent a Sunday Night laminating all the actives we would work on for the next couple of weeks. Most of the activities are from my Mastering Money Unit. 

I give my students a pre-assessment before every new math unit and put them into groups of 4-6 kids based on their level of understanding. So Monday is always fun when I reveal the new groups on the math board.

This week's learning target was "I can count a group of coins and bills up to $5.00". So we started with some fun math literature. We read the book Pigs Will Be Pigs: Fun with Math and Money by Amy Axelrod. As we read we collected, counted, and recorded the coins and bills that the pigs found,  including the two-dollar bill. Yes that is my real cash pictured. The kids got a kick out it.

One of our weekly word study assignments is Valuable Words. The kids LOVE it. I created a different version as a hands on activity for the week to work on when kids were not in group with me.

The math journal activity this week was to consider a variety of ways to make a dollar. Here students are using coins to brainstorm different ways to do this and recording what they came up with on a recording sheet.

The kids had a blast in math this week and are looking for every opportunity to count money. What kinds of fun things do you do to get your students to master money?