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Common Cents (Updated!)

Should the United States get rid of the penny?

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Common Cents (Updated!)

Should the United States get rid of the penny?

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Check it out! This lesson was just updated in September 2024, and we hope you love the new and improved version. If you've already prepped an earlier version, fear not, you can still find those here through Thursday December 5, 2024.

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Common Cents - Student Handout.pdf
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Common Cents - Teacher Guide.pdf
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2023-2024 Versions

In the fall of 2024, Citizen Math released updated versions of every lesson in our library, plus a few new ones! We know you may have already prepped an earlier version or planned a repeat of last year, so we're continuing to make these earlier versions available through Thursday December 5, 2024.

You can find the new lessons through the regular search, and we hope you love them as much as we do. You can read more about these updates in Our Community.

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

  • Physical forms of money cost money to make. Some coins cost more to produce than they’re worth.
  • Money does not have inherent value. Currency has value because people in society agree to give it value.
  • The United States could follow other countries in abolishing the penny. This would have advantages and disadvantages.

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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