TEACH CONCEPT OF NUMBERS IN MONEY FOR YOUNG LEARNERS.

When my grade 4 learned “Buying and Selling” in Chinese, they also had to learn how to count money in Indonesian currency as they lived here. We faced the challenge that Rupiah has more nominal than other currencies. Therefore, I would like to share my learning activities that we have done in our class.

Ages: 10-11 years old

Objective:

- Count numbers 100-100.000 in Chinese correctly

Learning activities:

1. Assess student’s prior knowledge: we played a game when all students stood up in a circle and I played music. When it started, they had to move along the circle. Suddenly I stopped the music and called out a number (above 10), example 15 and students had to make a group with 15 kids and the rest of students who did not make it had to sit down. Then it continued with a new number.

Note: Our class consists with around 22 students.

There was another game that we also played when students sat down in a circle with a ball. One person had to say a number above ten and tossed a ball to someone else to continue the number.

2. I showed Indonesian money flash cards that I already printed before the class begun and I asked students to examine how many zeros in each of it and grouped them into some categories. Example: All two zeroes (100, 500), three zeroes (1000, 2000 and 5000), fourth zeroes (10.000, 20.000 and 50.000) then fifth zeroes (100.000). Then, I introduced new vocabulary 百(bǎi), 千(qiān), 万(wàn), 十(shí) 万(wàn) and lead them to say the numbers.

3. I checked student’s understanding by giving oral quiz. I showed random flash cards and asked students “多duō 少shǎo 钱qián?” 

4. Rolling activities: I grouped students based on their abilities.

Ø High level: Peer activity: place value battle; each student got a number strip that they had to cut and listening worksheet. They would do rock, paper, and scissor to choose who will say the number first. One of them would start arranged the number and dictated it to his/her peer. Then the second student would arrange the same number, wrote it as numerical and words in a paper.

Ø  Medium: They would do writing worksheet. 

Ø Basic: I helped this group to review the lesson, answer their question and clarify their understanding. After all, they would draw a thing (could be stationery) wrote a price label and then created play money according to the price.

5. To wrap up the lesson, we played place value bingo as whole class activity. We set up the range of numbers, example: 100-100.000 and I decided the numbers that we were going to use. Students got blank Bingo sheet and wrote those numbers in random boxes. One student read one number and whole class would crossed it out. The winner would be those who got all 5 boxes crossed vertically, horizontally or diagonally.