Learning Opportunities

Understanding place value is crucial for students to move past counting as their “go to” strategy and to be considered an additive thinker. Place value understanding is the foundation for the development of early mathematical thinking. Yet many students do not have a clear “picture” of what place and value really mean. We will discuss the importance of first building a visual understanding and then asking students to connect it to the symbolic representation.

In this workshop, we will investigate:

• Using inventory activities to help students to see the connection between “how many” and how our numbers are written.
• Using blocks to make a measurement tool
• Locating and navigating on number lines: jump BY benchmark numbers and jump TO benchmark numbers to solve addition and subtraction problems.
• Working with non-standard partitioning of numbers that leads us to solve addition and subtraction problems without “carrying” or “borrowing”.
• “Building” a place value model to show place and value meaning
• “Wipe out” game to look at the mechanics of place value
• How place value understanding relates to mental math skills