Lesson Video: Recognizing Notes: GBP Mathematics

Video Transcript

Recognizing Notes: British Pounds

In this video, we’re going to learn how to recognize and tell the value of all the notes used in the UK. In the UK, just like in many other countries around the world, there are two types of money that are used. Firstly, there are little pieces of metal, mostly circles but some other shapes. And these are mostly gold, silver, or bronze colored. These are our coins. Here they are. But then we have another type of money. These are very thin. They’re used to be made from paper, but nowadays most of them have made from a kind of plastic. And they’re rectangular shaped. These are not coins. These are our notes.

And so in this particular video, we’re going to be thinking about this second type of money. We’re going to be learning about notes. And in the UK, there are four different types of notes we need to learn about. And each note represents a number of pounds. Perhaps you’ve come across the word “pound” before. Certainly, if you’ve learned about all the different coins that there are in Britain, you’ll have heard the word pound mentioned because although a lot of these coins show a number of pence, two of them show a number of pounds. And these are these two silver- and gold-looking coins at the bottom. The one on the left has a value of a one pound. This is a one-pound coin. And the one on the right is worth two pounds.

Now imagine you wanted to buy a new fridge freezer. These often cost several hundred pounds. Can you imagine having to carry hundreds and hundreds of these pound coins to the shop to pay for it? Your trousers pockets would be really heavy. And this is why we don’t have more and more coins to represent larger and larger amounts of pounds. Instead, we use notes that are made out of plastic or paper and are much lighter. One more thing to mention before we start is that although we have money that represents one pound and two pounds, it doesn’t just keep going up in ones. There’s no such thing as a three-pound note or a four-pound note. If we had lots and lots of notes, it would take us all day to think about how best to pay for things. And we’d never remember which one was which.

Thankfully, there are only four notes that we’re going to be concentrating on in this video. And we’re going to learn about them in order. In other words, we’re going to start with the one that’s worth the least, and that’s this note here. Have you ever seen one of these before? This note has a value of five pounds. It’s worth the same as five-pound coins. Now let’s have a good look at this note so that we recognize it whenever we see it. The five-pound note is a sort of bluey-green color. And there are lots of places that we can see that it has a value of five pounds. Can you spot where?

Well, there’s a big, bold number five in the top left-hand corner. I don’t know whether you can see, but there’s a much lighter number five in the top right-hand corner too. Then we’ve got the number five written in words here and also up here, and then it might be hard to see because we’re looking on a video and it’s quite small. But if you had a five-pound note in front of you, you might be able to find lots of other places where the number five appears. Let’s zoom in and we’ll see a couple more.

Firstly, there’s a tiny number five on this shiny part, right next to the crown at the top here. And there are lots and lots of little fives, as well as a bigger one in this corner. And every note is a little bit like this. There are lots and lots of clues that we can use to tell how much a note is worth. So the note with the lowest value is five pounds.

Now how much is our next note worth? There’s no such thing as a six-pound note or a seven-pound note. Here’s a clue. This note’s value is the same as this number of pound coins, Do you want another clue? It’s also worth the same as two five-pound notes. Our second note is worth 10 pounds. The patterns on this note are mostly an orangey-brown color. And we can see again that there are lots of number 10s on there, aren’t there? Now we seem to be going up in fives here: five, 10. I wonder what our next note is going to be worth. Could it be a 15-pound note or maybe something different? Let’s have another clue.

Our next note has a value of a four five-pound notes. We could skip count in fives to find out how much it’s worth. Five, 10, 15, 20. This is a 20-pound note. It’s worth exactly the same as 20-pound coins. As well as seeing the number 20 on there, we can also see it’s a different color to the others. The pattern on this note is a sort of dark bluey-purple color. Now the five-pound, the 10-pound, and 20-pound notes are all the sorts of notes that we might see in everyday life. People use these three notes all the time when they’re shopping. But there’s one more type of note that’s a little less common. It’s the note that has the largest value. Can you guess what it’s going to be?

This note is worth 50 pounds. And you don’t see many of these. People don’t just go walking around with 50-pounds note in their pocket. And if we ever see one of these, we’d really want to be able to recognize it. So let’s remember what color this one is. The design on a 50-pound note is a sort of reddish color, isn’t it? And of course, a 50-pound note has a value of 50 pounds. Look how small we’ve had to draw those pound coins to fit them on the page. Now what would you rather count out if you had to pay for something, 50-pound coins or one note that just says 50 pounds on it?

Using a 50-pound note is much easier. It’s much lighter to carry around, too. In a moment, we’re going to answer some questions where we need to put into practice everything we’ve learned about recognizing notes. But before we do that, let’s really check that we’ve remembered them. Let’s play some games. Now we’re going to point to these notes, but not in order. Your job is to call out the value of the note, but before it appears on the screen. Ready? 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 50 pounds, and five pounds. Now well done, but that game was too easy. All these notes have gotten numbers on them. Of course, you can tell what they’re worth.

Let’s shake things up a little bit. This note has been nibbled on by a hungry mouse. And oh dear, the very parts that have been nibbled are those parts of the note that have the number on them. Now how much is this note worth? Or how much was it worth before the mouse ate it? Now, as there are no numbers on here to help us, the only thing we can really look at is the design. The design on this note is a sort of orangey-brown color. Do you remember which note looks like this? Before it was eaten, this note was a 10-pound note.

Let’s try another game. Spot the odd one out. Which one is not correct? One of these notes doesn’t look right. Can you tell which one it is? It’s the five-pound note. We know that the design on a five-pound note isn’t pink like this. It’s a sort of bluey-green color. That’s better. These both look correct now, don’t they? Let’s try one more. Spot the odd one out. Again, one of these notes isn’t correct. Which one is it? Well, the 50-pound note looks okay. But wait a moment; there’s no such thing as an 11-pound note. Someone’s trying to trick us with this question. The number on this colored note should say 10. You seem to be very good at these. Let’s try answering some questions now.

A jar of slime costs five pounds. Which note is worth five pounds?

Have you ever been shopping for slime? Well, in this question, we’re going to have to. In the first sentence, we’re told that the jar of slime that we can see in the picture costs five pounds. And underneath, we’re given some more pictures. These show a type of money called notes. Whereas coins are made out of metal, notes are really thin. They’re made out of paper or plastic. And we’re asked, which one of these notes is worth five pounds? Now there are lots of clues we could use to help us here. Firstly, we know how to write the number five as a word because it’s in the question: F-I-V-E, five. And we also know how to write it as a number.

Now the note we’re looking for has got the number five written on it both in words and as a number. It’s not the first note. This note has the number 10 written on it. It’s written as a number at the top. And can you also see it’s written in words near the bottom? This note is worth 10 pounds. Our second note does have a five written on it. But can you see there’s a zero that comes after the five? This note is worth more than five pounds. This note has a value of 50 pounds. And so this only leaves us with this bluey-green colored note on the end.

We can see that this note has the number five written as a number. And if we look really carefully, we can see it written in words too. And can you see that the way that five pounds is written in the top corner is exactly the same as the way it’s written on the jar? The note that is worth five pounds is this one.

Benjamin gave his son the note shown below. How much is this note worth?

The type of money that is used in Britain is both coins and notes. And in the picture, we can see one of these British notes. And we’re told that Benjamin gave his son this amount of money. But how much is this note worth? What’s its value? In a way, we need to be detectives in this question. We need to look on the note for clues that are going to help us to tell how much it’s worth. But perhaps you can see a really big clue in the top left-hand corner. But let’s look for some of the smaller clues to begin with.

We’ve got this number here, which is the same as this smaller number here. And if we look really carefully, we can see lots of tiny numbers all the same in this shape here. There’s a number written in words here. And then there’s this big, bold clue here. This is probably the one you spotted first of all. Our final clue is the color of the note. The design on this note is a sort of dark blue or purply color. And if we put all these clues together, what have we got? Well, the number that’s written is a two, followed by a zero. And as we’ve said already, it’s also written in words. A two followed by a zero is the number 20. And we know that the design on a 20-pound note is this sort of purple color. There are lots of clues that we can use to tell us how much this note is worth. It has a value of 20 pounds.

Count the notes. How many five-pound notes are there? How many 10-pound notes are there? And how many 20-pound notes are there?

In the picture, we can see lots of money. But there aren’t any coins here. These are all notes, and each note shows a different number of pounds. Now this question tests how good we are at recognizing these notes. We need to count how many five-pound notes there are, how many 10-pound notes there are, and also how many 20-pound notes there are. So let’s start by thinking about the five-pound notes. How do we know a five-pound note if we see one? A five-pound note is a sort of bluey-green color, but really importantly, it has the number five written on it. This is how we know it’s worth five pounds. Let’s go along each row of notes and look for five-pound notes.

We could put a counter on top of each one we find. In the first row, there are one, two five-pound notes. There don’t seem to be any in the second row or the third row. But if we look in the bottom row, we can see another one. So that’s one, two, three five-pound notes altogether. Now we need to think about 10-pound notes. We know that the design on a 10-pound note is a sort of browny-orange color. But the thing that really tells us it’s worth 10 pounds is where we can see the number 10 on there. Let’s go hunting for 10-pound notes. There aren’t any in the first row, but if we look in the second row, we can see one, two 10-pound notes. If we quickly look in the other two rows, we can see that there aren’t any more 10-pound notes to be found. There are two 10-pound notes.

Finally, we need to count the number of 20-pound notes. A 20-pound note has a sort of dark bluey-purple design to it. And it has the number 20, a two followed by a zero. This note is worth 20 pounds. Let’s count them: one, two, three, four, and then there’s one in the bottom row that makes five altogether. In this question, we use what we knew about five-pound, 10-pound, and 20-pound notes to recognize them. There are three five-pound notes, two 10-pound notes, and five 20-pound notes.

Which note is worth more?

Now these might just look like rectangles with pretty designs on to you. But in real life, these rectangles are notes. A note is a type of money. These two notes used to be made out of paper, but nowadays they’re made out of a very, very thin plastic, and they’re worth something. They have a value. Now in this question, we’re asked which of these two notes is worth more? Can you see what number is in the corner of our first note? A one followed by a zero is the number 10, isn’t it? And if we look carefully, we can see the number 10 in lots of places on this note. It’s even labeled, 10 pounds. So we know that this first note has a value of 10 pounds. Let’s use a number line to show where the number 10 belongs.

Now let’s look at our second note. Can you see which number appears again and again on this note? It’s the number five. This note has a value of five pounds. Let’s mark the number five on our number line. So which note is worth more, the 10-pound note or the five-pound note? Well, this is where our number line can help us. We know that the number 10 is greater than the number five. It comes after it on the number line. It’s a larger number. And so if we have 10 pounds, this is a larger number of pounds than five pounds. It’s more money. Even though these two notes look like similar sizes, one is worth more than the other. The note that is worth more is the 10-pound note.

What have we learned in this video? We’ve learned how to recognize and tell the value of all the notes in the UK.