Money, money, money!

Part of the NZ Curriculum is Financial Literacy or Financial Capability.  In a nutshell this is getting the students to understand money and be able to make decisions about how best to manage money. You can read more about this here :NZ Curriculum - Financial Capability in Schools

The students are doing some work in class in both Maths time and in CRT time with Mrs Tolsma. Today we brainstormed where money comes from, what money we use and what happens when we pay using cash for items that cost for example $2.99 when we do not have 1c, 2c or 5c coins.

I then set the students a challenge in their maths groups.  Using supermarket brochures they had to "go shopping" and choose items that would feed 5 people for a main course, pudding and a drink.  Each group received a different budget - the Hexagons had a fictional $100  to spend, the Diamonds were given $90, the Circles had $75 and the Squares had $50.  They had to cut out the pictures of the food they wanted and then work out how much the food cost to see if they could afford some more items, or whether they had gone over budget.

It was great to see the class really engaged in the task, and there were some intense discussions over whether dinner should be chicken or lamb and maybe more importantly whether it should include vegetables!  Dessert seemed very important to all the groups and sweets for after dessert also featured heavily.

At the end of the lesson, each group presented their menu and told the class how much money they had spent - all had money to spare, and I would have happily gone for dinner at any of their parties.