Student Work Blog 4/2

This week I worked with the students in their centers. My mentor teacher wanted me to introduce the dime. The students have learned about the penny and nickel but this was their first experience with working with dimes. I first gave the students magnifying glass where they could look at the dime and tell me about the size shape and color. I then told the students that a dime is worth ten cents. We compared the sizes of the three cents and reviewed how much each cent is.

The studetns then took turns rolling the nice which had two 1 two 2 and two 3 on them. I would give them that many cents and once the students got five pennies they could trade them in for a nickel and if they had two nickels they could trade that in for a dime. There were many questions I asked while working with these students:
Why can't Kayla trade her three pennies for a nickel?
Can we make a trade?
Why can Kayla trade her two nickels for a dime?
How many cents does Kayla have now?

Some things that the students struggled with that if they had a nickel and one penny how many cents does she have? A lot of them would say two cents because she had two physical coins in front of her. However, I had to remind them how many cents a nickel is worth and then how many cents a penny is and then add them together. After a lot of practice the students were able to understand this concept. The students really enjoyed this activity and surprisingly didn't focus on the fact of having the most money or making it a competition. I would say after this activity the students were able to say the difference between the three coins as well as how many of each they needed to make a trade.

To further the students knowledge I would introduce the quarter and do the same thing with all coins. I would also continue on adding different amounts of coins so that they don't continue to just count the coins but remembering how many cents each coin is worth.