Over the past week, first graders have been working hard on studying place value. By definition, place value is the value of a digit depending on its position in the number, such as ones, tens, hundreds, or thousands. “What does that mean?” you ask! When looking at a number, such as 526, first graders are able to break this number down based on what the digit in each place means. First graders would look at the number 526 and know that this number is made up of 5 groups of 100, 2 groups of 10, and 6 groups of 1. We have been exploring and learning about numbers up to the thousands place.
Having an understanding and background knowledge in place value is very important. It is a foundational skill for understanding numbers, their value, their order and more! We will revisit and use our place value knowledge when we learn about multi-digit addition (258 + 23) and subtraction (539 – 93). We also use this information to help us with reading numbers.
Students are engaging in a variety of activities requiring them to build and break down numbers, including using base-ten blocks, representing numbers with place value charts, expanded form and written form! This week, students have used their new knowledge of place value to help them count and add the seeds from a pumpkin, change a number from digits to expanded form and back, and so much more! Check out the picture of the base ten blocks at the top of this post to figure out how many seeds were in the pumpkin we carved! Tomorrow we will do a “write the room” activity where students will hunt around our classroom for place value puzzles and record their answers, then race to find another!
Next week, we will dive deeper and look at the thousands place and more! These first graders are about to become experts at reading and breaking down BIG numbers!
