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Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Teaching Place Value


Now that we are in a normal routine at school, I wanted to write about the activities that we used to teach place value to our 3rd graders. 

1)  Math Expressions (VA Edition) "Secret Code Cards" :
Has anyone used these? I was skeptical at first, (mostly the cutting/punching out of cards) but now I love using them! The students seem to really understand values of the digits and expanded form, because of these cards! 



2) Good 'ol fashioned Base-10 Blocks and white boards: 
Who knew third graders (and probably most students) loved using these little blue blocks? My kiddos definitely loved using them! They understood what each one meant, and were able to quickly "build" the number I gave them! They even understood the "tricky" ones with zeros! 



Oh, how my 3rd graders LOVE task cards! Especially, these colorful ones! Click the title of this section to find them in our TpT store! The differentiated student recording sheets were very helpful! 



After "building" numbers with the secret code cards and base-10 blocks, the students moved on to playing place value games! The students' favorite was "CHOMP!" (similiar to POP! games) The students pull the cards out and answer them. The questions are a mixture of value of underlined digits and place of underlined digits. This is a particularly difficult concept for our 3rd graders, simply because of the similar wording of the two questions. If the students pull out a CHOMP! card, they have to put all their cards back in the container. They absolutely LOVED playing this! 





The students also had fun playing Place Value Memory. The students can only match the cards if they have the card with the underlined digit and the card with the VALUE of the underlined digit. The students actually really enjoyed playing this one as well! (Anything is better than worksheets, right?)




Click the title of the section to see these stations in our TpT store! (There's even a place value board game!) 

Please share any activities you love using for place value! We are about to start on ordering numbers and rounding! With our new series, we've struggled with finding meaningful activities, so please share any wisdom you have! 




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