Day Six

Tuesday seemed to be an easy day for the students. We had a lesson on money and equations. The majority of our lesson focused on money. I had went to the point of requiring the students to make a money chart for reference during our lesson. To my surprise they really didn't need this but it did reinforce their concept of money values.

I brought play money coins (with some real in it because the package came with no nickels at all and very few pennies) for the students to work with. The student's knew the values right off the bat. They could also tell me how many ways we could make 75 cents. They could count the value of the coins and tell me when it was equal and when it was not. They could also tell me why it was not equal.

We then moved to equations that did not deal with money. At first when the students saw that 4 + 1 = 5 and 2 + 3 = 5, there were no problems. When they saw 4 + 1 = 2 + 3, it took a minute but it clicked, they were equal. They understood that to keep them equal they had to add the same value to each side of the equal sign. This became an easy lesson for them.