Using Money - The Complete Series (5 lessons)

Help your children become increasingly confident drawing upon a variety of practical, mental, informal and formal written methods to help them work with money. Throughout these five lessons, children will improve their ability to read, write, say, order, add, subtract, multiply and divide money, including working with negative numbers. At the end of the week there are opportunities to apply what has been learned through interpretation and manipulation of some real-world money data about family spending in different regions of the UK.

There's a choice of well-differentiated activities and a range of printable games and other resources to ensure children have plenty of opportunities to consolidate their learning and apply the skills shown in the included slides.

Kick things off by recapping how to read, write, say and order amounts of money, including negative amounts. Following this, remind your class how to quickly add and subtract amounts of money using formal written methods. After that, there's a choice of two activities for them to undertake, including a differentiated 'Money Run' adding and subtracting board game.

Start by looking at ways of quickly doubling amounts of money by partitioning them, then go on to practise multiplying money by three or more using a formal short multiplication method.

Once you've gone through the slides and explained these methods, there's a choice of activities, including a mixed-ability pairs/group task where children must multiply and total amounts of money for a takeaway meal.

Before getting into dividing amounts of money by more than two (that's in the next lesson in this Complete Series!), demonstrate methods for halving money by partitioning amounts. The included slides explain how remainders are a little different when working with money, and how to find them. After that, there's a choice of activities where children can practise halving money, including using bank notes and coins when solving two-step problems.

Rather than purely focussing on written methods for dividing money, this lesson firstly looks at practical, 'real-world' methods for sharing large amounts of cash. After that, the advantages of using a formal, short division method are demonstrated. Following this, children will go on to practise and consolidate their money-dividing skills, selecting appropriate methods in a variety of contexts.

Now it's time to apply everything that's been learned about working with money! A number of word problems are shown in the included slides, where children must select appropriate methods for adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing money. After that, there's a choice of two, differentiated activities for your class to undertake – during which they'll work with some real data about family spending in different regions of the UK.