Place Value Game: Show It Four Ways

How to Teach Place Value

When teaching place value, I always have a few friends that have a difficult time representing a two-digit number using drawings or base 10 blocks. I’m going to share some strategies that work and provide you with a free math center activity.

What is Place Value?

Place value is where a number is located relative to other numbers in a sequence. For instance, the number 245 means there are two hundred, four tens, and five ones. An understanding of place value is foundational to understanding how numbers work.

How can we help students become proficient in this skill?

Do you have students that struggle with place value?

To help students to become proficient, they need multiple opportunities to represent two-digit numbers in multiple ways. If we want our students to develop a deep understanding of place value, we need to represent the number using objects and drawings as well as explain their work.

Strategies that work

Here are some actions you can take to help students understand place value.

• Model how to use the vocabulary  – Most students confusion with this concept comes with not having a firm grasp on the vocabulary. Teach them the vocabulary by modeling how to use it correctly. Provide students with opportunities to use the language when describing how they represented a number.
• Provide opportunities for students to draw or build the number. Give students word problems such as “Ms. Miller has 23 cupcakes. Draw a picture (model or diagram) to show how many groups of 10 she can make.”
  1. They can solve word problems like these as a math warm up or their math journals.
  2. Have students explain how they got the answer to a partner or class.
• Use a place value chart. Make a T-chart that labels the tens and ones’ columns. Display a two-digit number and have students build the number by putting the correct numbers of tens under the tens column and ones under the ones column. Have them explain their work to you or to a partner.

Show It Four Ways

Here’s a hands-on math activity for students to practice modeling and making two-digit numbers.

How to Play

1. Students pick a number card.
2. They write the number in the star.
3. Using drawings or base ten blocks, they build the number, write how many tens and ones, write the number in expanded form. turn and talk with a partner and share how they built the number.

Read this article to get more place value math center activities.

Happy Teaching!

Tee