Maria Handel

Number Sense Project

21 September 2016
Dr. Jones
How Much is a Million?
1.) Target audience: 4th Grade
2.) Title: How much is a Million? Written by David M. Schwartz, Illustrated by
Steven Kellogg
3.) Brief Synopsis: The story follows a wizard who is trying to put into perspective
how big a million, a billion, and a trillion are for children, or number sense. The
wizard compares a million, trillion, and billion to each other using children, pages
of stars, goldfish and counting over time. At the end of the book, there are pages
that show how the author got the numbers and sizes using mathematical formulas
and lengths and areas of objects.
4.) PA Math Standards:
Mathematics CC.2.1.4.B.1 Apply place value concepts to show an

understanding of multi-digit whole numbers.

Mathematics CC.2.1.4.B.2 Use place-value understanding and properties

of operations to perform multi-digit arithmetic.

5.) Activity 1: At the end of reading the book, I will pull out a fake one billion dollar
bill and say, The magician wants to know what all could you buy if you had a
billion dollars. I will hand each child a fake billion-dollar bill. They will spend
the class making a list on how they plan to spend the money. They will have
access to a computer so they can look up real prices. They will document on the
list each price and subtract that price from the billion dollars so they can keep

track of how much money they have left. Once they have used all of their money,
they can compare to other students how they used their money.
Activity 2: After reading the story, I will ask the children if they think there are
even a million people on this planet, then ask if there are a million in this country,
then in this state, or in this town. Next, I will tell them we are going to check to
see what countries have a million people in them. For this activity, the students
will have access to an atlas or website that shows the populations of the world.
Each student will have a partner and they will be assigned a country and have to
find the top ten most populated cities and then write them in order from the
highest to the smallest of the most populated cities.
6.) Materials:
How Much is a Million? book
Pencils and papers to write
Fake billion-dollar bills (20)
Atlases or computers to look up city populations and prices of items
Calculators if need be
Map of the world
7.) Fully Developed Activity: The Population of the World- students will list the most
populated cities in order from most populated to the least populated using the top
ten most populated in their assigned country. This activity will be completed in
partners; each pair will be assigned a country. If the class is small enough, we can
do this activity using continents. I will direct this activity as a class, taking about
35-45 minutes to complete. The materials can be gathered from the library atlases
if the school has them available or we can use online resources that are more up to
date with the world populations.
Instructions: I will assign each of the students one partner. Every pair will receive
a country. Their task is to look up the top ten most populated cities of that country.
Write down the total population of those cities on a paper. Next, your job is to

write these cities in order from the most populated to the least populated from that
list you have already made using only those top ten cities. After you are finished
with this task, you may compare your population list and names to another
groups, quietly until the other groups finish.
The activity will be presented after reading the book; a large map will be placed
the day of the reading on the chalkboard in the front of the room. Students may
look and browse the map beforehand. The papers will already have the country
assigned listed on top as well as bullet points on the front of the paper to list the
countries and numbers on the back to list them in order.
8.) I am trying to help students grasp the largeness of the world and how enormous
the population is, and we have not even seen a 1/8th of the population! The
purpose of this entire lesson is to introduce large numbers to children using
familiar places and objects they have seen in their experiences. Large numbers are
a difficult concept to grasp, however this lesson is intended to put the large
numbers into a sense the children can understand better rather than just throwing
mathematical formulas and statistics at them that they have never heard of before.
The lesson allows students to compare the large numbers and gain a better number
sense through this plan.
The connection between the book and the lesson plan is made through the large
numbers the children are dealing with in the story and in the population of the cities.
Since the children understand how big one-million, one-trillion, and one-billion are after
reading the story, they gain a better concept of just how populated the cities are in other
countries. The students are learning as well there are so many more places out there that
they have yet to visit, let alone the amount of people they have never even met. Children

struggle to understand just how big our planet is, and with this book and this lesson, they
can gain a better grasp on how big the world is using objects they are familiar with.