Understanding Place Value
One of the most important concepts that children need to understand deeply is the concept of place value.
Place value is much more than just locating hundreds, tens and ones and placing a value for each number.
For children to develop a deep understanding of place value they also need
to understand that 10 is both 10 ones and 1 ten.
For example in the number 38. The value of the 3 in this number is 3 tens or 30 ones.
In this activity, the children are using their hands/fingers to make the concept of place value visible. It is not about counting with your fingers one by one, but showing groups of tens and ones.
The children are representing different numbers by working together to show the groups of tens and ones.
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| Together the children represented the number 34: 3 tens and 4 ones OR 34 ones. |
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| Representing numbers visibly helps children to move beyond counting one by one on their fingers. |
This learning will be effectively applied when working with much bigger numbers in the 100's and 1000's. We need to know about the nature of numbers so that we can mentally manipulate any numbers, no matter how large.
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| Representing numbers using the blocks |
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| The number expander |
Using the interactive display to manipulate number blocks electronically.
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