Smart

By Shel Silverstein

 

My dad gave me one dollar bill

‘cause I’m his smartest son,

And I swapped it for two shiny quarters

‘cause two is more than one!

 

And then I took the quarters

And traded them to Lou

For three dimes ---I guess he don’t know

That three is more than two!

 

Just then, came along old blind Bates

And just ‘cause he can’t see

He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,

And four is more than three!

 

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs

Down at the seed-feed store,

And the fool gave me five pennies for them,

And five is more than four!

 

And then I went and showed my dad,

And he got red in the cheeks

And closed his eyes and shook his head –

Too proud of me to speak!

 

This poem, memorized and recited by students in second grade at Liberty Common School, only sparks delight if you have knowledge of the value of the money the child is trading away.  This particular kind of knowledge is becoming harder to impart to young students as commerce transitions to digital currency. 

 

We learned, just this year, the U.S. penny will no longer be produced.  The cost of minting the penny exceeds its value.  In general, students’ knowledge of all the various coins and forms of physical money is decreasing.  Many are not able to identify a coin’s name or its value. 

 

Allowances are no longer doled out using the spare-coin jar.  Playing “store” with siblings or friends has been left behind for flashier playdates.  Will students be able to recognize this poem as humorous in ten years?  Beyond the loss of recognizing its humor, will students’ use of coins as a tool for learning mathematical concepts become obsolete? 

 

Coins used to be some of students’ first manipulatives.  I remember working at the hospital auxiliary shop with my grammy.  I was seven or eight years old.  She had me count coins in the cash drawer and then helped me count back change when a customer bought a candy bar or stuffed animal for a patient. 

 

I learned it took one-hundred pennies to make a dollar, ten dimes to make a dollar, and only four quarters to generate the same value.  I learned how to add and subtract before learning the actual algorithm for this process.  This education was priceless.   

 

Liberty instructors will continue to help students learn about money and in doing so, help them have greater “number sense”—the understanding of how numbers are ordered and how to make sense of that order.  We begin by familiarizing students with the names of the coins, their distinguishing characteristics, and their value.  The process of counting physical objects to a quantity of five, then ten, etc., is priceless in their understanding of “things” having a value: One, two, three, four, five.  These number words all have associated values represented by fingers, pennies, or other objects and later symbols which we call digits.  The Singapore Math curriculum calls this progression “concrete," then “pictorial,” then “abstract.”

 

More critical is the skill of “making tens.” It is foundational in students’ ability to develop number sense.  We work in a base-ten system in math, helping students better understand this when they have tangible objects to represent those quantities.  Ten pennies make a dime.  Ten dimes make a dollar.  Students must master the ability to construct and deconstruct numbers in this place-value system.  When students struggle in math, it is typically tied to a lack of number-sense mastery.

 

Counting money builds the foundational skills of place value and even begins to develop an early understanding of the concept of parts of a whole, either in fraction or decimal form.  For example, one penny is one hundredth of a dollar, or a quarter is one fourth of a dollar.  These ideas can also be represented in decimal form: Dollars are the whole and centpieces are the tenths and hundredths.  Explaining to students there will never be a value in the thousandths place with money because there is no value smaller than a penny—one hundredth of a dollar—helps students begin to have a concept of decimals even before decimals are formally introduced.

 

It is easy to dismiss discontinuation of minting the penny as a mere economic necessity.  However, as it disappears from our common use, the impact on the development of mathematical understanding for our students cannot be understated.  Are there other ways to develop this understanding?  Of course!  Silverstein's poem may just become less humorous, however.