The Money Book was developed as a way for our students to independently pay for things at the store. Some of our students were not ready to manage their money when making purchases on their own. We developed and taught them to use a tool to do it without needing an adult to support them. You will see this type of thing a lot here at TeachingTheirWay. Our students may not be ready to perform a skill that looks the same way we might do it, but we develop and teach them tools to give them independence from other people. Who wants someone breathing down their neck all of the time telling them what to do? NOT ME and NOT THEM! 

Take a look at the final product:

 

Click Here to check out the product in our Teachers Pay Teachers store. 

 

Please remember – this is one step in the process to teaching financial literacy. This tool may or may not be needed long term. The purpose of the Money Book is to provide our students with a tool to independently pay for items when they are given a total by a cashier. There are many other skills for our students to learn. We hope you view this as a first step and come back once your students are ready to continue moving forward.

Your student does not have to be familiar with money or know their numbers before you introduce the Money Book. It is best if your student has matching skills and can imitate simple actions. 

Teaching the Money Book

MATCHING

Before you bind the money book, use the pages as matching templates. We will start with matching on pages that only have one type of bill (e.g., all ones, all fives, all tens). Give your student the exact number of bills he or she needs to match. This step also helps to establish 1:1 correspondence.

Your job at this point is to teach the student to match by the most important feature – the number in the corners of the bill. You may need to find a way to highlight this feature. We have our students point to the number on the template and then point to the number on the bill before they match. Start by modeling or physically prompting the students through this pattern and then fade back until he or she is independently attending to what matters, the number in the corners.

 

MONEY HAS TWO SIDES

Students should be able to match bills using the front of the bill, but should also be able to match front to back. Be sure to spend some time on this for the students who need specific practice in recognizing that a bill is the same value whether you look it on the front or the back. There are numbers on both sides, be sure they can match using either side. 

                  

 

MATCHING MIXED BILLS

Once this is mastered, teach mixed bills. Continue, if needed, to have the student point to the number on the bill on the template and then on the bill they have. When you prompt this, always prompt in the same order to create a routine. Again, it is important for the student to look to the template first and then their stack of bills, as this is the natural order they will have to use when performing this skill in a store. 

“What does the template say I need? – Where is that bill?”

 

MATCHING WITH EXTRAS

It’s a pretty rare occurrence that you have the exact amount of money in your wallet to pay for whatever you are buying. You probably have to sort through your wallet and select what you need and leave the rest in your wallet. We need to practice this skill before heading out the the store, too! After you present the template, give your student more cash than they actually need. Teach them to put the rest of the money back in their wallet once they are finished. 

The cue that you have finished paying should be that you have completely matched the template, NOT that you don’t have any money left to put down. If we skip this step, we are establishing the cue that you are finished with the template only when you have put down all of the money you have. DON’T SKIP THIS STEP!

WALLET

Up to this point, you may have placed a stack of cash in front of your student to use for matching. If so, start teaching the student to access money from a wallet, purse, or other realistic item they will use to carry money (fanny pack, anyone?). You can start this at any point before now, but if you haven’t started it yet, the time is now!

***ACCOMPLISHMENT***

Let’s take a minute to pause and discuss our progress in IEP language. 

Given a template with identical examples of mixed bills (e.g., a money book), along with extra bills, YOUR STUDENT will retrieve money from a wallet and match real bills to a template, with independence for at least 20 different purchase amounts.

For additional goals that could be developed for the skills addressed up to this point, check out the scope and sequence documents that come with the Money Book product. 

 

 

Assemble the Book

Note: During this phase, you should continue to practice the skills you have already worked on. Set aside time for this by flipping to whichever page the student needs and have the student practice matching (just like you have done up until this point). When you do this, you may want to exaggerate the act of selecting a tab and flipping the page. Model the visual scan of  the tabs with exaggerated gestures from your eyes and pointer finger, point excitedly to the correct tab, and flip the other pages out of the way. Talk about the process of using the tabs as you practice maintaining the skills you have worked on before you put the book together. 

 

PRICE MATCH

When we buy something, we see the price of the item on the register display. The cashier also tells us how much we owe. We want to keep this in mind as we teach our student to use the money book. These two things, the visual price and verbal request for a specific amount of money, should be presented to the student as we teach him/her to use the tabs of the book. 

 

 

EXACT PRICE

The Money Book comes with pages containing cards that can be used to show students a price. Hold up a “price card” and help the student find the correct tab. The important skill here is for the student to look at the dollar amount on the price card, ignore the “change” amount (for now), and match the dollar amount to the correct tab. 

 

Extra Support for This Step

If this step is too big a leap, we have a smaller step you can try first. In the money book product, there is a price card where the dollar amount is highlighted. There are also small yellow squares with numbers. Cut out the small yellow number squares and use them as extra prompts. When you present the price card, place the matching yellow number square on top of the highlighted number on the price card. The student can pick up the yellow piece and then directly match this to the tab on the book.

Sometimes this step can help our students make a more concrete connection between the price card and the tab in the book.

Be sure to fade this out over time. This is the easy part, as long as you make time for it! Once your student is successful with matching the small number card directly to the tab, use it as a practice step before teaching the student to open the tab after seeing only the bigger price card.

So – you will ask the student to find a specific tab two times in a row:

• • first with the movable piece
  • then without

At first, your student may need some guidance to find the tab without the yellow piece. Once they no longer need the guidance (e.g., you have faded your prompting), stop using the movable piece before presenting the number card. 

That’s a lot of words for a pretty simple strategy. Check out this video for clarity!

MOTOR SKILLS

We also need to make sure our students have the motor skills to use the tabs on the book. Is your student able to pinch the tab and move the pages around the binding of the book to get the unneeded pages out of the way? We may need to use some light physical support to help our students accomplish this. Fade your prompting as quickly as possible but work on this skill until they can do it on their own. Don’t do it for them! Use prompting and support to help them go through the motions of mastering this task. 

***ACCOMPLISHMENT***

Given a money book, mixed bills from a larger set (e.g., more bills than required for the task), an enlarged price, and an opportunity to make a purchase, YOUR STUDENT will open the money book and match the bills to the template in the money book to make a purchase virtually or in person, for a total of 20 different purchases.

Additional goals for the skills addressed up to this point can be found in the scope and sequence documents that come with the Money Book product. 

 

Click on the Money Book below to check out our Teachers Pay Teachers store, featuring the Money Book!

 

Next Steps

At this point, your students have learned to be pretty independent with money! You may have been teaching these skills outside of actually buying things. You may have added a little bit of real world context to your learning activities already. But if you haven’t, we recommend you start doing it now. Your students should use money for what it was intended – buying things.  

There are three big areas where we can begin to include more realistic situations with learning the money book. 

• Start using money within your reinforcement system in the classroom.
• Create mock community activities within the school.
• Go out to the community and get real experience. 

Like we said, getting the money book up and running is just the beginning. There is still a lot more to do! 

• Rounding to the next dollar
• Finding the price display on different cash registers
• Accepting and managing change
• Using a variety of ways to make one amount (e.g., Making $10 using a ten, two fives, one five and five ones, or ten ones).
• Creating mock community activities within the school 
• Taking the book into the community

We will create additional posts elaborating on these ideas soon! For now, start brainstorming activities within each of these areas as your student moves toward independence.

 

ABA Insights

Stimulus Prompts and Response Prompts

When it comes to teaching a new skill, there are two categories of prompting that all of our teaching strategies come from. We can organize materials in a way that prompts the skill (stimulus prompt) or we can act as the prompt by giving extra directions, gestures, and physical guidance (response prompts). The literature suggests that stimulus prompts are often more effective and more easily faded (Cengher, M., et al., 2018). Response prompts can be hard to fade or may just be less effective. Whatever prompting method you choose to use, just be sure to use it intentionally and to have a plan to fade it. Use stimulus prompts when they make sense and use response prompts when they make sense.

Make sure you are fading the prompt toward the natural cues and signals for the skill. Your prompts should always be geared toward teaching this signal (e.g., when the cashier tells you how much you owe, it is time to pull out your wallet and pay, not when the adult standing behind you tells you to get out your money). 

The Money Book is a stimulus prompt in itself. It is a stimulus that provides extra support for a student to count out a specified amount of money. Given what we know about prompts, the ultimate goal of the money book would be to fade it out so that a student is able to count out money without extra help. So, once more, the Money Book is a step within the process of teaching financial literacy. It is also a means of getting the adult out of the picture while the student learns to be independent in as many ways possible.

Throughout the process of teaching the Money Book, you will use both response prompts and stimulus prompts. You will use and fade physical prompts to help the students flip the pages in the book. You will use stimulus prompts if you highlight the number on the price card. You will use stimulus prompts when you teach the student to match the yellow movable number to the tab on the booklet. You will use response prompts when you teach the student to attend to the number in the corner of the bill when finding its identical match. 

Cengher, M., Budd, A., Farrell, N., & Flenup, D.M., (2017). A Review of prompt-Fading Procedures: Implications for Effective and Efficient Skill Acquisition. Journal of Developmental Physical Disabilities, 30, 155-173.