Math - Place Value

When I teach students place value, I give them a copy of a paper that has each place in the heading (and if they are expected to understand large numbers and/or many decimal values, I use the long side of the paper for the heading).

Beginning with the ones place, the students place each number to the left in the chart (naming each place aloud) until they have the entire whole number placed. Then I help them read the number from the largest to the smallest place. When decimals are involved, they place the numbers from the decimal point to the right (also naming each place aloud). Then I help them read the numbers from the largest decimal to the smallest.

In addition, if the students are unable to read aloud any of the place names, I teach them to read those names, using my concrete, pencil-paper, multisensory decoding strategy. We also represent the numbers as concretely as necessary for understanding using ones, tens, hundreds blocks.

I find that whenever this is all done concretely, in a careful, sequential manner, my students understand place value. Once they understand it, they are usually able to read the numbers aloud, as we generalize the practice to reading the numbers as they perform operations.

Email me if you have any questions about any of this.

Anita learntoreadnow

hello,
For basic math place values, not decimals. My twin boys and I sat on the floor with a lot of pennies. I told them to see how many pennies we could put in a group and still write the amount in that group as a single digit. As they stacked I wrote 1,2,3 ect till I got to 10. I explained that 10 was no longer a single digit, as it had two numbers in it, but it had now pushed the group of pennies to a new group(w/10 in it)and I pointed to the one in 10. I explained that with the number 10 we had that new group w/ 10 pennies but no more single digit number hence the 0 in the number 10. We kept going and as they grouped I would write down the number and have them explain what it meant according to the pennies in front of them. we “played” this game for about a half hour and I never had to re-explain place values to either of them again. Hope this helps.
Michelle

This is just too weird … I decided Iw ant to figure out some online exercises for place value and rounding.

The pennies exercise is really good (especially tossing in the “dime” concept). After a few times working with the pennies, depending very much on how far along your student has developed things like working memory, you can work in the “hundreds” place.
Using popsicle sticks or the equivalent (I think you can buy them pretty cheaply), or toothpicks, you can also use rubber bands and make bundles of ten to show the “graduation” to the next place value. You can use an even bigger rubber band to put ten of those together; this can help get the non-linear relationship across (the idea that the hundreds place isn’t somehow just two tens places… that jumping two places means a BIG BIG jump).
I’ll be scouting for some online stuff and putting it on my blog soon and I’ll post back when it’s up there.

SueJ, webmastress
http://www.resourceroom.net

I taught my daughter with the base 10 blocks. http://www.eaieducation.com/530350.html These are the ones we use. I actually got a huge box of them on ebay, ones, tens and hundreds. I also use a mat with the different place value columns and a picture of the cube, ten rod or hundred flat. I since bought some 1000 blocks as well. We use the cubes for adding and subtracting and learning how to do regrouping. I figure that if she can demonstrate all of these skills with the cubes she gets it. I taught her to use 2 mats when adding 2 numbers together and then combine them all onto 1 mat and to use 1 mat when subtracting, first building her number and then taking away. It’s great because when she started learning regrouping, she already had the basic concept of place value. I plan to use the cubes and mats for multiplication and division. You can get the mats and the sets from Lakeshore Learning or you might check ebay for “place value sets”. You never know.

Good luck.
Kathryn