Overall, I believe our activity went smoothly. Students seemed to enjoyed it and understand the rules and importance of the lesson. We were able to include everything we had planned to do and I believe we did so in a timely fashion. There was no rushing or unclear instructions; everyone had enough time to play the game and we were able to ask questions and review at the end. I believe our activity had many strong points, although there were some things we can do for next time to improve it.
I believe using the topic of money worked to our advantage because even at young ages children know that money has value. They are able to relate to it because it is an everyday necessity plus it is something they see their parents using, hence they want to learn about money so they are more like their parents. I believe by making this lesson more like a game peaked students interest, not only were they learning how to make a dollar but they were doing so in a manner that didn’t make them feel like they were doing school work. Another aspect I thought worked well in our lesson was bringing in different types of money. Even though different currency is most related to the social studies curriculum I thought it made the math lesson more relatable to the students by doing this as an introduction. Also, it is a perfect way of integrating both subjects together.
Some aspects that didn’t work the way we wanted them to and that we would do differently next time around included the game board, the size, the cutout coins, and the number of people we had playing the game at once. After watching students interact with the game we realized that it may have been to our advantage to laminate the boards and pieces for they had curved, therefore they would have been flat and would not have moved so easily or fly around. As well, we could have made the boards a bit bigger so students were better able to see it (especially for those with vision problems). I would make it a priority to use real money or toy money to make the lesson more authentic for the students. While the cutouts are ok it does not give the same affect as working with real money. However, due to the size of the class and time restraint, that was unable to happen this time around. Finally, I believe for future teaching of this lesson I will make it a priority to cut back the number of players per game board and instead allow students to do this lesson in pairs, that way students can work together and there aren’t too many playing at once.
I believe using the topic of money worked to our advantage because even at young ages children know that money has value. They are able to relate to it because it is an everyday necessity plus it is something they see their parents using, hence they want to learn about money so they are more like their parents. I believe by making this lesson more like a game peaked students interest, not only were they learning how to make a dollar but they were doing so in a manner that didn’t make them feel like they were doing school work. Another aspect I thought worked well in our lesson was bringing in different types of money. Even though different currency is most related to the social studies curriculum I thought it made the math lesson more relatable to the students by doing this as an introduction. Also, it is a perfect way of integrating both subjects together.
Some aspects that didn’t work the way we wanted them to and that we would do differently next time around included the game board, the size, the cutout coins, and the number of people we had playing the game at once. After watching students interact with the game we realized that it may have been to our advantage to laminate the boards and pieces for they had curved, therefore they would have been flat and would not have moved so easily or fly around. As well, we could have made the boards a bit bigger so students were better able to see it (especially for those with vision problems). I would make it a priority to use real money or toy money to make the lesson more authentic for the students. While the cutouts are ok it does not give the same affect as working with real money. However, due to the size of the class and time restraint, that was unable to happen this time around. Finally, I believe for future teaching of this lesson I will make it a priority to cut back the number of players per game board and instead allow students to do this lesson in pairs, that way students can work together and there aren’t too many playing at once.
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