Pocket Money

1. Pocket Money We have some data about children’s pocket money and would like you to check it out to make sure it gives a true picture of what you guys get each week. 8 to 11-year-olds: average of £4.80 12 to 15-year-olds: average of £7.44 a week Boys get just over a pound more than girls! Boys: average of £6.88 Girls: average of £5.58 Shirley Smith, bank representative

2. What do you do with your pocket money? I wonder if I have saved enough money for the Top Trumps dog card game yet? The Halifax bank did a survey about what children do with their pocket money… I’m one of the third that saves some of it. I’m one of the quarter that spend every penny. I save my pocket money to buy something expensive that I want. If there’s something expensive that I want, I use pester power!!

3. Up2d8 maths Teacher’s guide According to research by The Halifax Bank published in December, pocket money 'rose by 11p a week on average' in 2009. British children received an average of £6.24 a week in pocket money this year, a slight rise despite the recession. The figure is up from £6.13 in 2008, but is still well below the average amount in 2005 of £8.37 a week. A survey of 1 202 children aged between eight and 15 for the Halifax bank found that boys typically received just over a pound more than girls. … continued on the next slide

4. … continued What appeared to be encouraging news is that about a third of the children said they saved at least some of their money each week. Before you begin using this spread it might be helpful to familiarise yourself with the story. The spread has ideas that can be adapted to suit most age ranges depending on their knowledge and experience of money and data handling. Pick out a few to try with you children and see how they get on!

5. 1st spread: Pocket Money ● Ask your class to tell you whether they are given pocket money. Do they need to earn it by doing chores around the house or are they just given it? If they do chores, make a list of these on the board. Make a tally to show how many of them do these chores. Ask the children to display this information in an appropriate way according to their ability e.g. pictogram, bar chart, pie graph. ● Ask them to identify the amounts of money on the spread and to order these from least to most on their whiteboards. You could ask them to plot the amounts on a number line from £4 to £12. Next ask questions about these amounts that involve place value, finding totals and differences, doubling, multiplying. ● Ask the children to compare the amounts they are given to the data on the spread . Are they given more/less/same? How does the money they are given compare to the other areas mentioned. Is their a difference between the amounts the boys and girls receive in your class? ● Ask the children to work in groups of around four. One child from each group visits all the other groups to find the amount each child is given (envoy activity). They make a note of what is said. On returning to their home group they compare all the amounts. ● They could group these amounts to make tables of grouped data or they could round them to the nearest whole pound/50p/10p and then make a record in any way they choose to present to the class. ● They could repeat this by collecting data from different age ranges around the school. ● Children under eight were not included in the survey. Plan and carry out a survey of children under eight in your school. Compare the results with the details on the spread. How old is the youngest child who receives pocket money? …continued on the next slide

6. 1st spread: Pocket Money continued… ● Older children could work on the mode value of pocket money, the range and median, and with a calculator find the average for the different classes around the school. ● If you have any connections with another school in a different part of the country the children could email/contact them to find out the pocket money given to those children and compare with theirs. ● Once they have done all or some of the above activities ask them to compare their findings with the data on the spread and to write a report to show why they agree/disagree with it drawing conclusions from the information they have found. They could then present their reports to the class. ● Younger children could counting the pound coins. Ask questions such as ‘what if….. there was one more/less, ten more/less, double the amount, half the amount.’ Is there enough for one each? How many more would we need? ● They could identify all the different coins and then find out how much there is of each different type. You could use this to practise counting in ones, twos, fives, tens and even 20s linking to counting in 2s. ● Give them a pile of coins, point to one in the pile on the spread and ask them to find the same one in their pile and show you. ● Ask them to sort their coins into those that are the same and then take one of each and order them according to their value. Some of the children could draw a number line from 0 to £1 and position their coins in their approximate places.

7. 2nd spread: Education – what do you do with your pocket money? ● Discuss what it says on the spread about the Halifax bank’s findings on what children do with their pocket. Lead a discussion on what the children in your class do with theirs. Make a list of what they say and then a tally to show what they do. The children could then turn this into a bar graph or pie chart. Ask questions from their representations and identify if this is representative of the Bank’s findings that about one third of children save some or all of their pocket money. ● Discuss saving money and ways to do this: piggy bank, savings accounts in banks, building societies, the Post Office. Do any of the children use these? Discuss interest as a way of earning extra money on money saved. ● You could use savings accounts as an opportunity to look at percentages. Pose problems such as I saved £50 for a year and earned 5% interest, how much was in my account at the end of the year? Use different amounts and rates of interest. ● The children could research on the internet which banks give the best interest and what they need to do to benefit e.g. put money into it and leave it there for a year or two years. Compare any joining gifts. Which account has the best offer? What do we mean by ‘best’? ● Talk about the things that they would save up to buy. Make a list of their ideas on the board and discuss how long it would take for them to save enough e.g. Nintendo DS at £100, if given £6 per week. Encourage them to use their multiplication tables to do this mentally or mix this with grouping e.g. in 10 weeks they would have saved £60, 15 weeks £90, they would need another two weeks’ pocket money making 17 weeks in all. ● Set some problems similar to this using prices to suit the attainment levels of the children. …continued on the next slide

8. 2nd spread: Education – what do you do with your pocket money? continued… ● Give them Argos catalogues or similar and ask them to find things that they could afford to buy with one week’s pocket money. They could also do this by looking at toy shops or other stores that sell toys on the internet e.g. Toys R Us. ● Do any of them use their money to buy sweets? They could make up price lists for different favourite sweets and work out how many of each they could afford. They could continue on this theme to work out different combinations of sweets for half of their pocket money. How many possibilities can they find? ● Maybe the older children save up to buy clothes. If so give them clothing catalogues and ask them to find items that they would like and work out how long it would take to save enough money to buy them. ● Adapt the three bullet points above to suit the varied interests of the children in your class. ● You could develop a toy, sweet or clothes shop role play area where the children sort and organise the items, make labels for their costs and act out buying and selling. ● Extend the activity to ask questions about birthday, Christmas and holiday money.