what we know about coins

The Grade 1 students in Jenna Loewen's class at Garden City Elementary have been happily singing away to the classic song "Canada in my Pocket" by Michael Mitchell as they have been learning about the Canadian coins.

When I visited their class on Thursday, they could tell me all about the values of the coins, what colours they were and what animals or boats were on them. One student was also happy to share all that he had learned about the caribou...

We had small collections of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. The students enjoyed examining each coin and feeling the difference in their textures. They looked closely at the numbers, words and pictures on the coins. Each team of students took turns taking photographs of the coins using the iPads.

We then used the app Haiku Deck (like powerpoint for the iPad) and the students created captions describing each coin.

Here is an example of a group project created in Haiku Deck:


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Our redesigned curriculum in mathematics has re-introduced aspects of financial literacy beginning at the grade one level. Learning to identify and describe Canadian coins will be one of the curricular content pieces at the grade one level and this is an example of a task that will support student learning in this area.
~Janice