Open Middle®
Directions: Make 47¢ in three different ways with either quarters, dimes, nickels, or pennies.
Hint
How can you show your answer using pictures, numbers, and words?
Answer
Answers will vary but include 47 pennies as well as 4 dimes and 7 pennies.
Source: Thad Domina and Robert Kaplinsky
Thanks for sharing this task.
I am wondering if you might leave out the use of decimals in this task since decimal notation for money isn’t a standard expectation until 4th grade. You could revise as, “What is the fewest/most number of coins (dollar coins, half dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies) you can use to make 1 dollar and 50 cents.”
See below for details from Bill McCallum’s blog on the use of whole number money amounts in 2nd grade…
Bill says: April 4, 2012 at 9:45 pm “Erin basically has it right. In Grade 2 students are dealing with whole number quantities, so word problems for 2.MD.8 would either deal with whole number amounts of dollars or whole number amounts of cents. This doesn’t exclude problems where students have to convert collections of coins and dollars into whole numbers of cents. Indeed, this provides valuable preparation for 4.MD.2.”
http://commoncoretools.me/2012/04/02/general-questions-about-the-standards/
You are totally right. Some TOSAs from San Marcos USD mentioned this to me. I revised it in one place and not here. It is updated now.
I plan to ask my students how many pennies they will have to use for each solution. Get their math minds thinking that with an amount that isn’t a multiple of 5 or 10 they MUST use pennies in each solution.
4 dimes,1 nickle,2 pennies
1 quarter,2 dimes,2 pennies
1 quarter,2 nickles,1 dime,2 pennies