Economics and Magic Trash

It's about time I added some record of teaching to this here blog. It's been a while!

Today my students and I had our "ecomonics day." First-grader style. First, we had a class lesson in changing money. Everyone was given a fake dollar, and then they had to change it into coins. By the end of the time frame, they needed to have 1 Quarter, 1 Dime, 1 Nickel, and 1 Penny, at least. Good example of something getting lost in translation: most students ended up with only 41 cents. If that. The "bankers" didn't really get the whole conservation of value thing either, but we definitely worked on pairing, cooperation, and communication skills. And some of them know how many dimes make up a dollar. Success! I'll take it!

After our money changing, I fixed the amounts so everyone had 3 quarters, a dime, two nickels, and 5 pennies. Then, later in the day, we had a lesson on supply and demand. I had brought in things like regular pencils, and super-sparkly pencils; glue sticks; craft kits (with popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, etc); personal packs of tissues; a bag of jolly ranchers; pencil erasers, etc. Each student HAD to buy a glue stick ($2), 2 erasers ($1) and a pencil (plain, $1; sparkly, $2). Then, they had to plan out what they would spend the rest of their money on. Would they buy their own tissues? ($2) Which three people would get the packs of colored pencils? ($4). Each student had between 5-10 bucks to buy with. They had earned the money throughout the week for good behavior in the hallway, at the end of the day, etc.
I don't know how much they would have understood this graph:
But they certainly understood the unfairness of how there were only 3 boxes of colored pencils, and 10 people had enough money and desire to pay the EXPENSIVE $4 for it. We ended up having to do an elimination game (bubble-gum, bubble-gum, in a dish...) to figure out how to keep our classroom environment safe and positive.

Management-wise, it was a zoo. Kid-involvement was 100%: they even got to be store owners! And for several of these kids, they don't have their own glue stick at home, so this was a fun activity.


Okay, now for Magic Trash.

This is my absolute favorite teaching trick. Okay, close second is the magic number cards, but this one still tops it. At the end of the day, I tell the students that I have selected a magic piece of trash on the floor. The person who finds it will get the lolly-pop in my hand. I won't check your collection of trash until all pencils, papers, etc are off the floor.

"Line up....quietly, please. Ah, good try. Nope. Nope. No----Wow! You found it! (Point to a student in need of positive reinforcement. Select something random from the trash they found.) Good job!"

This requires very little work on your part, and it is a fun way to encourage the students to clean up. Plus, last year, not even my fourth-graders got the hint that I really hadn't pre-selected the trash on the floor---just the kid.

Shhh... Don't tell any kids. If I lose that trick, I don't know how I'll teach school.

;-)