Sunday, March 9, 2014

So Does Mine. A Quick and Fun Way to Look at Coins

Does your school use Responsive Classroom?  Mine does and that means morning meeting time each day.  Last year, I purchased this great book for the teachers in my school.



This book is full of great ideas that are quick and easy and some that are a little more involved.  It ranges from grades K-5 and has ideas for adding math into your morning message or morning meeting.  

I have seen this book used greatly in some classrooms and less so in others.  To encourage more use and to get more math into morning meeting time, I have been visiting different classrooms during their morning meeting to demonstrate an activity from this book.  Check out this post about how I used an activity from this book last week to work on counting money with third graders.   

Today I want to share with you an activity I did with a group of first grade students.  This activity is from the Kindergarten section and is called So Does Mine.  I changed a few minor things to suit this class better.

The first graders are going to be starting their unit on coins and money this week.  This was done during a morning meeting time and was a great way to get them engaged in coins and to really take a deeper look.  It is simple and fun.

Each student and the teacher each need one coin.  I gave out coins and gave about 2 minutes of time for everyone to study their coin.

A student studies his dime during morning meeting 
Then the teacher starts by saying something like "my coin has a head on it."  Everyone who has a coin that this is also true for stands up and says "So does mine."  After I took a few turns sharing things I noticed about my coin, I let some of the students make statements about their coins.  
I loved how this got kids really taking a deep look at their coins and even got them moving up and down.  Engagement level was really high and I think everyone learned something about the coins.

We had a few minutes left so I put kids into pairs with someone who had a different coin than theirs.  I had them trade coins and think about how the new coin was the same or different from the last coin they had.  

Since doing this activity, I have been back in this classroom twice for math time.  I have had kids share with me things they have noticed about coins at home and also had them bring coins in their pocket that they wanted to share something from.  

It is a great activity to open your students' eyes to the many details of coins.  I am thinking I will even try this activity out with older students, especially those who I have in intervention groups who still struggle with coin recognition.


I will be sharing other ideas from this book as I visit classrooms and try to get more math into morning meeting!

Check out these other ideas for teaching money!

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