In the subsequent three days, students will continue working with the play money, practise making pay packets in "Pay Packet Play", carry out "fair trades" in the "Go Fair Trading Game" and explore number problems by grouping money on Place Value Houses, thinking about rounding, grouping, and estimating to solve money story problems.
For the first day of exploration, provide pairs or small groups of students with plastic baggies or clear-faced envelopes into which they can put play money piles. Discuss a scenario with the students where they are in charge of banking and payroll at their school. It is their job to put together teachers' pay packets for the week. Have students challenge each other to solve how much money is in their pay packet by providing them with information such as:
Have students take the play money out if they need to use it to work out the problems they create for each other. However, ultimately the goal is to have students use their place value understandings that 10 tens means 100 without them having to count forward in tens to work out answers.
Have students use notes that are appropriate for them (that is, remove the millions, billions if they are causing too much difficulty or distraction at this stage).
Throughout the pay packet play, have students discuss what patterns they are observing and how they are working out how much is in their pay packet. Students take turns to make pay packets for each other.
Adaptation for ESOL students: Have the students record their problems using words and numerals on pieces of paper. The 'list of useful words' will need to be extended accordingly.
For example:
For example:
Discuss which ways of recording are the most efficient and why.
Finally, have students "win" extra lotto money to add to their pay packet or "lose" tax money that they have to pay at the end of the week.
Adaptation for ESOL students: To be sure the concept of adding and losing money is understood - model the lotto win and tax loss (and the accompanying emotions!). If a students has worked out that their pay packet of 20 $10 000 equals $20 000 pose problems such as:
For this second day of exploration, the activity can be played in a small group or as a whole class. Have the students sit in a circle. Tell them you are going to give them some money in a pay packet that is theirs to keep and trade with throughout the "Go Fair Trading Game". Their aim is to not lose any money as they play each round of the game.
Students will close their eyes (so that you can count out piles of money without students counting along with you!) while you distribute "packets" of play money in front of them.
They will need to find the total of their pay packet of money and, without talking, find someone else in the group who has an equivalent amount of money made from different denominations with whom they can make a fair trade for their money.
Modelling the game:
Play a number of rounds with students receiving different pay packets each round. Money returns to the teacher at the end of each round. They can keep track of their total score by adding on how much each pay packet contains in each round.
Have students try to make the trades without talking (for an extra challenge). Encourage them to avoid counting on or back to work out the total of their pay packet. Push them to adopt more efficient strategies such as:
Continue discussing the trades increasing the complexity and number size with each round. Have students share and record their strategies for each round.
In this third day of exploration students will make further links between the play money and our whole number place value system by placing money on the Place Value Houses. Students will gain confidence reading multi-digit whole numbers using the Place Value Houses to help them make sense of large numbers. Finally, they will begin solving addition and subtraction problems by using their knowledge of grouping play money by tens/hundreds and by making sensible estimations that they can check with the money.
Pull out A3 laminated Place Value Houses along with the piles of Play Money that have been used throughout the past two days. Ask students to decide how to organise the Place Value Houses based on the play money sorting task they carried out on the previous day.
Eventually, working together, students should be able to connect the Place Value Houses in order starting with the "Trend setter house" on the far right connecting to the "Thousands House" on its left, the "Millions House" to the next left, the "Billions House" next and finally the "Trillions House" on the far left hand side.
Have students place the play money into piles in the appropriate spaces in the place value houses. Discuss how and why they know where each pile belongs in each house.
Ask them why the think the first house on the right is named the "Trend Setter House" (because it sets the trend of ones, tens and hundreds that keeps repeating in our whole number place value system).
Once students have discussed the names of the houses and reviewed the patterns and connections between the groupings within the houses (each pile to the left is equal to ten of the denomination to its right.... 1 hundred is equal to 10 tens.) have them place the piles of money just below the Place Value Houses.
On the whiteboard or on a piece of paper, write amounts of money such as:
With each amount you write, have students first try to visualise what piles of money they would place on the appropriate places within the Place Value Houses. Have them describe to a partner what ones/ tens/ hundreds of play money etc. they would place on the houses to make the amount $5, 450.
As students discuss what they are visualising, if they get stuck, have them actually count out the required money, placing it in the appropriate spaces of the Place Value Houses. Again, encourage them to use their groupings of tens knowledge to count out money rather than counting on to add up money.
[Option: As students create money involving ones, tens and hundreds, you can also place Base 10 / Multi-Base / Place Value Blocks alongside the play money to show the students you are dealing with the same concept of 1/10/100 but in the context of money.]
Have students challenge a person beside them to tell them what piles of money they would place on the Place Value Houses for an amount that they write on paper.
Help students decode the reading of large numbers by always having them begin reading numbers at the far left and saying first the "ones, tens and hundreds" and then the Place Value House name and so on.
In this way, the number $45 874 230 would be explained and read as: (Always start reading with the far left hand side of the number):
Remind students: The spaces remind us where a new house begins!
Practise reading each other's large numbers written on paper and making them on the Place Value Houses.
Extension: Begin simple addition (that doesn't require renaming at first) and subtraction (that doesn't require decomposition) problems.
Published on: 09 Jan 2018
