Money Jar Update

I finished up the money jar with my student and it was a success! We finished off our summer tutoring with a trip to his favorite place-McDonalds. He took his money jar and paid for my lunch and his. Then we even had enough money left over to go over to the grocery store and buy a treat. He did really well paying the money to the cashier and then he did the self check out at the store. As he was putting in the change he kept track with the computer and could tell me he needed 9 more nickles to make 45 cents. I let him have the rest of the money if he promised to count it once in awhile...we spoke on the phone today and he proudly told me how much he had left in his jar. He made plans to go buy something with it.

At the beginning of this journey, he wasn't too excited. Once he realized that I wasn't going to let him off without doing the money math each time we met, he got the hang of it.

If you're interested in seeing a few of the problems we did each day click here.

Money Jar

I introduced a money jar to one of my tutoring students this summer. Inside of it I put coins and dollars. Before we began our math work with the jar, I asked my student to refresh me with the values of each coin or dollar bill. He wrote the values on a piece of paper. Next I had the student count the money. I didn't tell him or show him the quickest way. I let him struggle for a few minutes and then I did mention one mathmatic idea he could use-tally marks. He liked that one. I didn't tell him how to set up his tally mark system, I let him explore how would be best to keep track.

It took him a few minutes, but then he figured out what worked best for him. One thing I've noticed about teaching students is that we don't give them enough time to process and think through what we are asking them to do. The student gives up a little too easily when we show them our way. I liked leaving the task of counting the money up to him. Can you see all the little tally marks he made on the other board? Then he decided to keep all the counting in penny amounts and add them up at the end.

When I work on money problems for the next few days, I will post the problems that we do with them so that you can see what we are doing. I like to try to make the math applicable to something they like -icecream, shopping, toys, bikes, etc.