Place value is such an important concept for students to learn. It is the foundation for them to gain an understanding about addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Below I have provided some examples of hands on place value activities I have completed with my students.
One activity I love to do with my students every year when teaching about place value is a place value scavenger hunt. All you need for this activity is some magazines or cataglogues that students can cut. I give them a template with instructions on numbers they need to find in the magazines for e.g. ‘find a number with a 5 in the ones place’. Students use their understanding of place value to search for a number in the magazines that has a 5 in the ones place – 35, 465, 15. This year I used this activity as a pre assessment (AFL) to see what my students already knew about place value and inform my future teaching. I found the information I got from it very valuable to decide on ‘where to next’.
As a math rotation my students always love playing place value bingo. It’s such an engaging activity that incorporates MAB’s to give students a visual of the number they are looking for. This activity is so easy to differentiate for my different ability groups as I have a 1-digit, 2-digit and 3-digit activity board. Often if I have students that require that ‘hands on learning’, I will actually give them the MAB’s to make what is on the board so that they can physically manipulate the blocks and number in front of them. This activity is definitely one of my students favourites, year in and year out.
Another math rotation activity that I have found to work wonders in engaging students learning about place value, is called place value wheels. Students are given a wheel with all different numbers around it (once again easily differentiated as you can change the amount of digits in the number) and also a spinner. They spin the spinner and whatever number it lands on, they make that number with the MAB’s. I noticed that this activity has been especially beneficial to my lower ability groups or my students that need to manipulate things. This activity is also a great way to see if students are able to identify the number on the spinner and also represent that number with MAB’s.
During guided groups, I often get out my building numbers place value mat. It is a fantastic way to visually represent to students how we can partition two- and three-digit numbers into hundreds, tens and ones. The place value mat mimics the way a number is written from left to right which allows students to visualise the number being represented.
Some fantastic online activities that are an engaging way for students to learn about and reinforce the concept of place value are linked below.
https://www.abcya.com/games/base_ten_fun
https://www.abcya.com/games/place_value_hockey
https://www.abcya.com/games/base-ten-bingo