Aaron’s word of inspiration this week is penny.

PENNIES!
Ok, just hear me out!
Canada discontinued the use of pennies as currency in May 2012!! MAY OF 2012!!! NINE YEARS AGO!!!!
And yet, during my number sense unit on money this month, I had to teach pennies!
PENNIES THAT WE DON’T EVEN USE ANY MORE!
I get it, my littles are all 7 and 8 years old and they need to be able to make change by one’s. Some of them are so bad at number sense that skip counting just isn’t going to work for them. We are working on it, but ya know what? Number sense is the hardest strand of math for my littles. It’s hard to grasp at such a young age. So, I get it. Let’s make it easy on them and keep the pennies around in their work books and in lessons.
But if I have a little YouTube video clip with a song about Canadian coins, pennies are not there. If I have a chart of Canadian coins, pennies are not there. If I ask them to count the change in their adult’s wallet, YEAH THAT’S RIGHT PENNIES ARE NOT THERE.
SOOOOOOOO my question to all of you out there who can’t do anything to correct this flaw in the Ontario Mathematics curriculum is – WHY DO WE STILL TEACH PENNIES?!?!?!
The children will never have to make change with them in real life. And yes, ok I also concede that the concept of rounding up or down to the nearest 5 would be way too difficult for my littles, and honestly any other grade 2 class, but still. What’s the deal!?
A big thank you to Aaron for once again allowing me the space and topic to have a good old fashioned Sunday morning rant.
Happy May 2-4 to all my lovely Canadian readers! Here’s to the long weekend! And actually I get another one next weekend so I only work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday! HA!
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Wow, only 9 years ago! That’s funny. We haven’t had 1 and 2 cents coins for over 30 years (since 1990). So I am no help because in our early years, they just learn how to use the money we actually have, lol.
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LOL I get the rationale behind it, but they could learn to count just the coins we have and leave the rounding change for higher grades? 🤷♀️
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They could just count peppermints or apples.
I think I have a few Canadian pennies around from when I lived in Detroit. Are they collectors items yet 😀
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Lol we start by counting things instead of money. But the money expectations are to be able to make change and adding how much things cost, or how much you have in your wallet 😂
And some pennies are collectors! But not a lot lol
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Feel like this is just a small piece of the greater conversation that is, “Why do we continue to teach kids things that won’t help them later on in life, instead of stuff that will” but I don’t want to get into that right now lol
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Haha yes please don’t get into it cos SHAKES FIST! Hahaha I get the learning scaffolding around it but dang, Paul! It was annoying lol
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