Teacher Information: Money
The purpose of this manipulative is to help students develop some familiarity with United States currency, both coins and bills. Images of bills include a circled number to identify their value: one, five, ten, twenty, or fifty dollars. The coins (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars) should be fairly easy to distinguish visually, but some initial guidance will be helpful when students first work with the manipulative.
Options
The manipulative provides practice with three different operations:
Students may benefit from some guidance in the order in which they practice with these options.
Make a Dollar gives students practice in the equivalence of different sets of coins. For most of the problems, there will be more than one way to make a dollar from the given set of coins. Thus if there are two quarters and a half dollar, $0.50 can be entered with either set. Then after the student clicks , it is possible to remove some of the coins and replace them with a set of equal value and again. For students working in pairs, one might make a dollar and then ask her partner if there is another way to make a dollar from the same set.
How Much Money asks the student to total the value of the displayed bills and coins. Before working with this option, students need instruction in the way we write an amount of money, using decimal notation, and value equivalences (four quarters make a dollar, etc.) need to be discussed as well. The student wants to learn to distinguish between $15.10 and $15.01. When a response is typed in, the button will indicate “That is correct,” or indicate that the money displayed is either more or less than the amount entered.
Pay Exact Amount could be used to model either payment or giving change. The critical concern in each case is choosing a specified value from a given set of currency. As with the other options, the button will let the student know if the amount in the box is too much, too little, or the correct value.