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Common Cents

Should the U.S. get rid of the penny?

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Common Cents

Should the U.S. get rid of the penny?

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Common Cents - Student Handout.pdf
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Common Cents - Teacher Guide.pdf
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Should the U.S. get rid of the penny? Each year the United States Mint spends more money producing pennies than the pennies are worth. Confronted with a similar issue, other countries have decided to get rid of their 1-cent coins altogether.

In this lesson, students operate with decimals to calculate the total costs to produce different U.S. coins. Students debate eliminating the penny and then consider a world with no physical money at all.

REAL WORLD TAKEAWAYS

  • Money costs money to make. The penny cost more than $0.01 to make.
  • Money has the value that a society agrees that it has, which can change.

MATH OBJECTIVES

  • Add, subtract, and multiply positive and negative numbers to answer real-world questions
  • Operate fluently with decimals in a real-world context
Appropriate most times as students are developing conceptual understanding.
Grade 7
Rational Numbers
Grade 7
Rational Numbers
Content Standards 6.NS.3 Fluently add, subtract, multiply, and divide multi-digit decimals using the standard algorithm for each operation. 6.NS.5 Understand that positive and negative numbers are used together to describe quantities having opposite directions or values (e.g., temperature above/below zero, elevation above/below sea level, credits/debits, positive/negative electric charge); use positive and negative numbers to represent quantities in real-world contexts, explaining the meaning of 0 in each situation. 7.NS.3 Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving the four operations with rational numbers.
Mathematical Practices MP.2 Reason abstractly and quantitatively. MP.3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. MP.6 Attend to precision. MP.7 Look for and make use of structure.

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