Money & Math Equations
Ways to teach equations through money
2 Birds With 1 Stone
In OCS Courses the curriculum states that students must learn to deal with money. the students are required to balance a check book, learn how to count money, and many other things involving life lessons with money. This incorporates not only teaching them to use money but also build equations as well.
To help students understand counting money and how to build equations I would start off with giving a beginning lesson on counting money. Then I would have the students read a word problem dealing with change and dollar amounts. The student would then take either money and change to devide it out and count separately how much change is needed for the problem. Then they would build an equation from that.
Example: Johnny has $3.57 in his pocket. If he only has 5 coins and 3 bills in his pocket, what type of money does Johnny have?
The student would proceed to count out 3 1 dollar bills and 2 quarters, 1 nickel, and 2 pennies.
Then the student would possibly write an equation like:
D+.25Q+.05N+.01P=3.57
This would represent number of Dollars, Quarters, Nickels, and Pennies
Instructional Steps
Step 1:
Read and understand what the word problem is asking
Step 2:
Count out money
Step 3:
Write out equations
Teachers can easily change up the types, difficulty, and length of the problems and equations to fit individual student's needs. This is an easy and fun way to teach money counting and building equations in one lesson.