A Penny For Your Thoughts ...

04 February 2013
Okay, my Canadian friends, this one is ALL for you!

I was up FAR too late last night, and caught the Google home page change to the image of the Canadian penny just after midnight.  Today is the last day the Canadian penny will be distributed.  I knew this was a current event I wanted to discuss in class, so I whipped up a little assignment for my students.  Students integrate their reading, writing, and math skills to create a nonfiction article about the penny, complete with text features. 

I've uploaded it to google docs, so if you think you have the time to squeeze this one in with your class, grab yourself a copy.  Just click HERE or on the picture to get the link. 

Happy Monday!!!

Jen

Update:  here are some of our finished products ... they look great!




11 comments

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Thanks so much for this activity. All my class could focus on is whether or not money would still be part of our daily math!!!

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  3. I love this idea, and I KNOW my students will love this too! We are obviously not from Canada, but I know that won't matter (we are VERY close so that helps). This is such a great idea, and it is going to spark many conversations in our classroom. I also love the fact that you just "whipped" this up late last night! HA! You rock Jen! Thanks for sharing this awesome resource!!

    YoungTeacherLove 5th Grade Blog

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  4. This is quite the fancy "whip up"! Thanks for sharing. I am in Canada and will use this tomorrow since I just saw it! We haven't nailed non-fiction text features yet, so I m actually going to use this as a kick off to get them thinking about it and see what they know! Did you have your students just Google search to find the information?

    Thanks so much!

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  5. Thanks for doing this Jen. I am kind of sad to see the penny go. Now they're talking getting rid of the nickel too. I remember when they phased out the dollar and two dollar bills and now I love the loonie and toonie. I guess I will get used to not having pennies too.

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  6. 2 questions...
    Did you find that answering ALL of these questions made for a rather long article? Where did students find the information?

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    1. Here's some of the links I found

      Good article and 2 short videos (listening skills here we come!):
      http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/04/canadian-penny-last-day/


      Another article - really neat interesting facts at the end:
      http://www.theprovince.com/news/Canada+penny+heads+into+retirement/7913978/story.html


      An MP "poem" about the penny (could be a neat thing to do too)
      http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/02/04/charity-penny-drive-roundup.html

      Fancy graphic of penny info - lots to look at, would be neat to have the students try to decipher part of it - lots of math involved through different types of graphics.
      http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/06/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-late-lamented-penny/

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    2. Thanks, Krista - what a great collection of links. We used the national post article and the article from the province in our class. I'm going to check out the national post one with the students tomorrow.

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  7. I love that you were able to just whip this right up:) I also love how your took advantage of such a timely event!

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  8. I just ran into "you" on TpT, which intrigued me, so I checked out your blog. This is FANTASTIC! I used to teach, but now I homeschool. I do not have time to create the things I want. I love your ideas, and I hope to use them more and more! Thank you for sharing your creative gifts and I can't wait to spend more time diving into your blog! You are very gifted!

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    1. Thank-you so much! WELCOME!!! I hope you find lots of ideas to use with your homeschool students!

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