How would you help a child who struggles with ‘money related maths questions’ particularly working out change

[justanotherneighinparadise]

I have play money. We’ve used Th/H/T/U grids to make sure he understands the denominations of coins/notes. He’s okay with column method adding and subtraction. But when it comes to giving change from a note I don’t feel we’ve cracked that.

Methods I’ve seen employed are number lines and counting back. Counting the money spent back up to the note value ie. £2.90 spent of £5.00 so saying £3.90, 4.90 then doing the number bond of 100 for the pence. Then obviously column subtraction which gets tricky when your dealing with 1000p for 10.00.

Anything I’m missing that will just cement this learning? Any gadget to buy that will give him an ‘aaaaah’ moment ir shall I just keep plugging away with the methods I’m already using until it sticks?

He needs to learn number bonds to 10,100 and 1000 really, really securely. Then it'll be easy.

It is very common that children get to the column methods stage before they're secure on number bonds.

I used to tell them to delete the decimal point.
So £10.00 minus £3.90 would become 1000-390.
Do the subtraction
1000

• 390

———— 610

Then put decimal place back by counting in two places from right and adding £ sign so 610 becomes £6.10. Voila.

Practice with real money.
Do lots and lots of shop keeper play.
Count the change out into his hand like an old fashioned shop keeper would have done- if you remember that far back. I can, unfortunately 😳.
Eg so change from £5.00 after spending £3.75
Shop Keeper:- «That’s £3.75 please and here is your change
So there’s 5p that makes £3.80, there’s 10p that makes £3.90p there’s another 10p that makes £4 and another pound that makes £5 and that’s your change Mrs! Good day to you!»

Then let him count the change.
Then do the sum on paper.
I hope that makes sense to you!

I always tried to make it fun!
I used to sell my son a snack! and let him work out the change.
Just role play to get him comfortable with counting and giving change in money.
Once he had cracked it, it helped him with all his number work.
I still get nightmares about teaching him 24 hour clock though! He’s over 30 now and a lawyer and I still wonder if he can «do» 24 hour clock now!
Good luck!

@PlanDeRaccordement

I used to tell them to delete the decimal point. So £10.00 minus £3.90 would become 1000-390. Do the subtraction 1000

• 390

———— 610

Then put decimal place back by counting in two places from right and adding £ sign so 610 becomes £6.10. Voila.

Agreed. But he’s okay with column subtraction until you can no longer borrow a ten and instead have to borrow a one hundred and split that along until you reach the units. At that point it turns to shit. .

@WhataMissMap

Practice with real money. Do lots and lots of shop keeper play. Count the change out into his hand like an old fashioned shop keeper would have done- if you remember that far back. I can, unfortunately 😳. Eg so change from £5.00 after spending £3.75 Shop Keeper:- «That’s £3.75 please and here is your change So there’s 5p that makes £3.80, there’s 10p that makes £3.90p there’s another 10p that makes £4 and another pound that makes £5 and that’s your change Mrs! Good day to you!»

Then let him count the change.
Then do the sum on paper.
I hope that makes sense to you!

I always tried to make it fun!
I used to sell my son a snack! and let him work out the change.
Just role play to get him comfortable with counting and giving change in money.
Once he had cracked it, it helped him with all his number work.
I still get nightmares about teaching him 24 hour clock though! He’s over 30 now and a lawyer and I still wonder if he can «do» 24 hour clock now!
Good luck!

I like the idea of selling him a snack!!! Genius.

At least he's not having to cope with £. s. d., which in my day included halfpennies and farthings. And we would get the guinea thrown in sometimes.

And at the end of the day... remember that well most likely be in a cashless society by the time he’s an adult and if not, the till will work it out for him 😁

Agreed. But he’s okay with column subtraction until you can no longer borrow a ten and instead have to borrow a one hundred and split that along until you reach the units. At that point it turns to shit.

But if you can carry a 1 from the ten column to the single column, it is same process to carry a 1 from the hundred column to the ten column. I don’t understand what you mean by “split that along until you reach units”. It’s just carrying a 1 from the left to the adjacent column on the right. You need to teach him it is the same process, not a different one to carry a 1 from one column to the adjacent one on right no matter whether it is from a 100 column to a 10 column or 10 column to single digit column.

I wouldn’t teach children to use column subtraction in the context of finding change - I’d count on. To get change, you usually are paying with whole numbers eg £1, £2, £5, £10 etc.
Start off with change from £1, then once they're confident move on to higher amounts.
Lots of practical goes using 1p and 10p coins first, then add 20ps then 50ps.

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zp8dmp3/articles/z2s6hv4
This might help too

Agree that children shouldnt be using column subtraction for finding change. I'll admit, I do teach Y5 about "double exchanging" but only because many don't have the number sense with bonds to 100/1000

Agreed. But he’s okay with column subtraction until you can no longer borrow a ten and instead have to borrow a one hundred and split that along until you reach the units. At that point it turns to shit

The best way to do this is to reduce each number by 1
So 1000 - 645 becomes 999-644. Then they don't need to do any exchanging.

My DS was in a similar situation and initially struggled with money-related problems. It took him a little while but he eventually grasped it.
When I tried to explain to him how to solve the problems, I realised that he did not really understand money itself as a concept. So I spent many weeks just trying to explain to him the importance of money and how we use money in everyday life. He slowly started getting it and then started pointing at things in the hours and asking questions like "How much is X". This was the time when I realised that giving him an idea of adding money, substracting money etc would make sense. We collected many copper coins and we played simple games with them for a couple of weeks.
To my surprise, he got way better with money and is now able to calculate in his head. My DD calls him "money dude" as he is always calculating how much money we need to earn to become rich :D

Set up a shop in your kitchen. Get lots of small change from the post office and play shops. Some kids need practical.

Counting the money spent back up to the note value ie. £2.90 spent of £5.00 so saying £3.90, 4.90 then doing the number bond of 100 for the pence.

Much easier IMO to do the little bits first. 2.90 needs 10p to make up to £3 then you are just dealing with whole numbers of pounds. Mathematicians are lazy, they try to turn tricky problems into easier ones. Eg if something was 89p the first thing you do is simplify to 90p, then £1 (or straight to £1 if number bonds to 100 are secure), hold the 11p in your head and everything else is easy. Less processing than trying to take 89 away from 500 or 1000.

Also we found using real money rather than fake helped.

You could use something like junior monopoly with some home made £1 and £2 coins, and £5 and £10 notes instead of the annoying endless £1 notes that come in the box.

"Counting the money spent back up to the note value ie. £2.90 spent of £5.00 so saying £3.90, 4.90 then doing the number bond of 100 for the pence."

Does he understand that there are a hundred pence in a pound?
If he does encourage him to think how many pence he needs to add to take the price to the nearest pound. In the case of £2.90 it's + 10p to make £3.00 then subtract the £3.00 from the £5.00 = £2.00 + the 10p

I agree using real money and letting him see that a £5.00 note is the same as 5 £1.00 coins and that a £1.00 I'd the same as 2 50p or 5 20p or 10 10p etc