- Partner: A La Par Foundation
- Title of the practice: Money Management
- Country: Spain
- Source: School experience
- Age of children: from 10 to 12 years old.
Main characteristics of the practice
Adaptive skills enable the children to live in a safe and socially responsible manner and they can be trained. These skills can be divided into three categories: conceptual, social and practical.
Good money management is an adaptive skill that blends these three categories. Money management could be difficult for many children and depending on the category were the difficulties appears it must be trained in one way or another.
Through the storytelling methodology, it is simple to train money management. In a multitude of traditional tales, the money management appears Puss in boots, Jack and the magic beans, etc.
Anyway, to create new stories around money it´s quite simple and an easy way to stimulate the interaction between classmates.
General goal of the practice and specific objectives
General goal. Improve the money management abilities in the children.
Specific objectives:
- Identifying the most common prizes of the articles that the children can buy.
- Discovering the different ways to pay an article and the payment change.
- Practicing money management in safe environments.
- Using the storytelling methodology to increase helpful attitude in the children.
Time organization
The practice can take any number of sessions, each one of 45 minutes.
Space organization
The classroom must be divided into 2 spaces. An informal stage and the traditional work tables.
Description of procedures/methodology
Setting
Each child draws all the types of coins and bills from one cent of euro to fifty euros, they also draw a pocket.
All students together draw the background of a city with different types of shops, stores, supermarkets, restaurants, etc. They also draw the main articles that will find in these shops. They create a prize table for the main products available.
The background is going to decore the classroom, so the use of continuous paper is recommendable.
Option A: Shopping session
In pairs, the students go to the informal stage. The teacher explains a situation, for example: “Mia haves 2,50€ and she wants to buy a loaf of bread at the bakery. Leo is going to be the baker”.
Option B: Storytelling session
The teacher makes two random groups. Each group must create a story about a character who wants to buy all around the city different articles. One premise is that at least in two shops the money change is incorrect, and describe how the character and de owner of the shop resolve the situation. The other premise is that the character must be helped by one of the classmates.
Each group must write the storyboard and take care of making the different noises of the story.
Obviously students with special educational needs have more difficulty handling abstract concepts, especially money. Through the story they can express attitudes of help between characters, this facilitates the acceptance of help by students with special educational needs.
The session should be used to develop support for students with special educational needs. These supports can be of a technological nature as a calculator, but it is recommended to create analog supports. Letters, decimal tables, coin drawings, etc. The invention and development of these supports can enrich the session and make it useful for the daily life of students with special educational needs.
Technologies
No technologies are needed.
Other materials
Paper, pencils, watercolors, crayons, continuous paper, etc.
Description of the final product
The final product of session A is an interactive and safe environment to practice money management in class.
The final product of session B is all kinds of support for money management. Also, the cards where students wrote down the money, Coins, and bills made of paper and cardboard, Dummy Invoices.
The final production of the activity enriches the classroom, providing the material that can be used in other sessions.
Conclusions
The teacher can practice and in different situations the money management with the children. It´s going to be easy to identify in which area (conceptual, social or practical) have more difficult each child.
By using a stage, it´s easy to reproduce real situations in the classroom. The repetitions became less boring and give support to those students with special education needs.
In session A, the student with special education needs can work many times in pairs. In session B, the teacher will aim the group to identify the best skills of the children with special education needs. The activity offers different tasks with different skills required such as writing, drawing, making noises, choosing music, etc. That it´s the main strength of the activity.
Another strength of the activity it´s that it can be used several times, and time by time it can be riched by new stores, products, and characters.
INCLUDED – Digital Storytelling for Inclusion
