Grade 3 Ontario Math: Financial Literacy

This unit covers the Grade 3 Financial Literacy strand of the 2020 Ontario math curriculum, F1.1, exactly as it is written: estimating and calculating the change for simple cash sales. Grade 3 keeps two kinds of amounts apart, whole dollars ($44 paid with $60) and amounts under a dollar (65¢ paid with 75¢), because place value to hundredths waits until Grade 5. Every question in the unit uses one kind or the other, never a mix like $3.45.

Students learn to estimate a total before they pay, count up from the price to find the change, and choose the bills and coins to hand back, in more than one way. A page on Canada’s no-penny rule shows how a cash payment under a dollar rounds to the nearest 5¢ (62¢ is paid as 60¢), and why a card payment is not rounded. A school bake-sale fundraiser and a partner game turn the skills into real selling and buying, and a page of word problems uses everyday Canadian settings, from a hockey canteen to a fall fair.

Two practice pages are generated, so every answer in their key has been computed and checked a second way. The teacher notes give a six-lesson order, materials, differentiation, common mistakes and a map from the expectation to its pages, and show how the unit builds on the Grades 1 to 3 coin-counting pack without repeating it. An end-of-strand check and a fully worked answer key finish the unit. The free sample is the teacher notes and the change-from-bills practice page.