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Smart
My dad gave me one dollar bill
'Cause I'm his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
'Cause two is more than one!
And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes -- I guess he don't know
That three is more than two!
Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just 'cause he can't see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!
And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!
And then I went and showed my dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head--
Too proud of me to speak!
-Shel Silverstein
Gundlach, M., & Grove, A. (2012, January 6).
Shel Silverstein Poems for Math Class. Bright Hub Education.
Retrieved from http://www.brighthubeducation.com/lesson-plans-grades-3-5/
72608-shel-silverstein-math-poems/
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Summary
Smart is a poem about a boy being anything but smart with his money. The boy in the poem starts with one dollar bill and continues to trade it for higher quantities of coins but ones that amount to less money. So while his number of coins increase, the value of those coins decrease, until he is left with just five pennies. The ending is what grabs the reader, though, indicating that the boy imagines his father is proud of him for his coin swapping when in reality the father is flabbergasted at the son's actions. This is a cute poem of how NOT to manage your money.
Teaching Idea: Internet Inquiry
Smart is a wonderfully humorous poem! My plan is to use Smart to grab students' attention and engage them in thinking about ways they can be smart with their money, unlike the son in the poem. We will begin by reading the poem aloud in class, discussing how the son in the poem did not manage his money well. I will prompt the class to discuss such concepts as short-term savings, long-term savings, spending, and donating, to activate prior knowledge. I will then ask students to conduct an Internet Inquiry to locate information on a variety of real life ways to wisely manage their money. Once they have browsed some methods, they will need to develop a basic plan on how they want to manage their money. The sky is the limit for the ideas they include just so it's something they can accomplish in real life. With the Internet Inquiry, students will be responsible for the questions they pose to gain more information on their money management plan. Then they will need to choose how they will present their findings to our class, making sure to include the math reasoning behind their plan. This will be an individual assignment where they need to answer the essential question, "How can I personally be smart with my money?"
This lesson corresponds with Math TEKS 5.1(A); 5.10(E), (F).
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