My Coin Crew!

For the last two weeks, we have been mixing it up with mixed coins!  I first introduced coins back in December, but I spiraled back to it now that my kiddos are much better at skip counting in the higher ranked numbers.

 In order to balance both the procedural aspect to teaching coins as well as the conceptual hands-on time needed to truly apply their new knowledge of coins, I made sure to provide students the opportunity to practice in whole group, small group, partner, and independent activities.

 We worked on identifying coins and skip counting like coins. 

 In order to make the connection of a coin’s value and how skip counting is the combining of that value, I used linker cubes.  We counted them apart and we counted them together combining the sets of five.  It was a great way to get them to understand what is really happening when we skip count.

 Students practiced skip counting with plastic coins right on their worksheets in small group.

They used the coins to help spot the correct coins and highlight them.

We sorted by value in order to skip count.

 For those that needed, we made hot dots in order to count without confusion.
 Another great small group idea is scoop graph and skip count.  I use the scoop and graph method for every thing I can possibly scoop and graph.

Step 1: Scoop

Step 2:  Graph

Step 3: Count

Step 4: Analyze
Students noticed right away that the tallest tower of pennies had the lowest value. This activity really brought light to concept that the coin’s value is way more important than the actual number of coins you may have. 

 In order to pull in more standards, we also compared coins using the greater than less than symbols.  Students then made trades to be able to change the direction of the symbols. 

 We played 5 different center games that helped us identify, sort, count, and compare coins.

Here’s a video of a game two students played at my table today during guided math.

             

 We also made sure to bring coins into our guided reading too!

All the math printables and games in this post can be found in The Coin Crew Unit at my TpT shop.

Now it is time for me to be counting SHEEP!  🙂 Good Night!