Thursday, April 17, 2014

On the Hunt for The Cash Caper!

Do y'all ever feel like you need a good hook {I mean a reeeeally good hook} to "sell" your kiddos on a lesson? When kids come to second grade they have been taught how to identify and count coins before.   As with most concepts that have been previously introduced in the younger grades, I have some kiddos who get it, some that don't get it, and some kids who fall into every nook and cranny in between when it comes to money. I needed a really good hook to get my kids excited about learning about money, AGAIN! That's how "The Cash Caper" idea came to be. I don't know about you, but my kids love a good mystery! One look at this guy and they.were.hooked.


Once I had sold him to them really good {dramatically, of course} the real fun began! Our second grade money standard doesn't have us learning about identifying and counting coins, but they are expected to solve money word problems. Before we began that, I wanted to know exactly where my kids were with money concepts. I had them complete a coin bubble map to show prior knowledge of each coin.


They wrote prior knowledge in green. After the lesson, they wrote new knowledge in blue and crossed out any misconceptions in red. {BTW… I think it's so cute how hung up they got on the color of each coin. They had to have the EXACT color written down. Ha!} Once I knew my kids could identify the coins, I had them show me what they remembered about counting coins, making a dollar, and showing coin combinations in different ways. Everyone needed a little refresher on these concepts! After a lot of modeling and practice, the kids that continued to struggle were given additional practice activities to work on with me during Guided Math. 

What I love about this pack is that I was able to incorporate adding up to four two-digit numbers {also a second grade standard} into our money unit too! Here is a little snapshot of one of my kiddos building her own pizza and adding up the toppings to find her total…


She even added her numbers using decimals! That makes my teacher heart flutter!

We also practiced a lot of different kinds of word problems involving money and wrote a lot about our mathematical thinking in our money reflection journal each day.

Here's a peek into this unit…


I also included coin manipulatives, both big and small. The small ones can be used by the kids and the large ones can be used as a giant whiteboard manipulative {Just add a magnet to the back!}.

If you're interested in this unit, you can find it here! It's on major sale for the next 24 hours! 

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