On Tuesday, I got the pleasure of working with Allyssa on money. This is a very difficult task for her to accomplish, but I think she has the skills of mastering it if she works hard. I took her to the library while the other children were silent reading. I brought with me a bucket of fake money, some problems on cut out pieces of papers, and a slate for her to write her answers on. The questions that I brought were a mix between word problems, and picture problems. One example of a picture problem would be two nickles, a dime, and 3 pennies drawn out on a piece of paper. There would be words on the bottom of each picture that would say, "How much do I have?" AN example of the word problems would say something along the lines of, "I have 3 dimes, 4 nickles, and a penny. How much money do I have all together?" For the word problems, I let her use the fake money, but for the picture problems, I didn't let her use the money. I had her using the problem to solve the problem.
The picture problems were very easy for her to get the answers to. On the other hand, the word problems were a little bit difficult. She knew what each coin was on the picture problems, but when it came to the word problem, she would forget what a nickle was and what a dime was. She would always confuse the two, which resulted in her getting the wrong answer.
To deal with this problem, I first had her sort out her money. I had her tell me which coin went with each name. The penny she got no problem. The nickle she got no problem. The dime she got no problem. Now, I had her read the problem up to each comma and stop. This helped her a lot because she wasnt overwhelemed with the amount of words in the problem. Once she sorted the money out, she would arrange it in the amount of money that had the most value, to the one that had the least (so dime, nickle, penny). This way, she counted the money in an accurate and efficent way. This helped her to get all of the problems right.
When we came back to class, the other children were working on word and picture problems with money. I watched closely at Allyssa's answers and found that she was getting them all correct! This made me feel VERY accomplished!
The picture problems were very easy for her to get the answers to. On the other hand, the word problems were a little bit difficult. She knew what each coin was on the picture problems, but when it came to the word problem, she would forget what a nickle was and what a dime was. She would always confuse the two, which resulted in her getting the wrong answer.
To deal with this problem, I first had her sort out her money. I had her tell me which coin went with each name. The penny she got no problem. The nickle she got no problem. The dime she got no problem. Now, I had her read the problem up to each comma and stop. This helped her a lot because she wasnt overwhelemed with the amount of words in the problem. Once she sorted the money out, she would arrange it in the amount of money that had the most value, to the one that had the least (so dime, nickle, penny). This way, she counted the money in an accurate and efficent way. This helped her to get all of the problems right.
When we came back to class, the other children were working on word and picture problems with money. I watched closely at Allyssa's answers and found that she was getting them all correct! This made me feel VERY accomplished!