We've been working hard on place value, exploring it in many ways, but I still feel a few of the kids are not clear on the concept so I went looking for yet another way to reinforce that understanding. I thought this was a good way to do so, since they are all very familiar with a hundred chart. We represented the groups of ten by laying a rod along each decade on the chart, then represented the ones by placing a cube on each number. It's a different and new way of looking at it and hopefully it makes it clearer.
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Having spent a long time exploring patterns on the 100 chart, we continue to explore place value. Understanding what place value is at a grade one level entails understanding of certain concepts, the first being cardinality. This principle reflects the child's understanding that the last number word of a group of counted items has a special meaning: it represents the set as a whole and the numerosity of this set of items. The child must also understand that our numeric system is based on groups of ten. It would be more accurate, and easier to understand, if spoken numbers corresponded exactly to their written equivalent so that 15 was "ten five" and 57 was "five tens, seven", but that's not how it's done! We've been using the abacus since day one of school, and most of the kids can recognize numbers on it quickly by counting by 10's. Taking that base, we've transferred groups of tens over to other manipulatives including snap cubes and base ten blocks (we call them rods and cubes). All of this is to reinforce concretely what the written numeric symbols represent. In the pictures below, the kids have been given a handful of circles and been asked to make groups of ten. We then laid a base ten rod on top of each pile of ten, then placed a 'ones' cube on top of each circle which was left over. We then moved the rods and cubes up to the top of the array to form a representation of the number, and finally wrote the number on a sticky note. When finished, we moved around the circle (like a carousel) to investigate all of the numbers we had made. The weather on Friday was just too lovely to stay inside, so we ventured over to the Walker Homesites playground, we have been looking at it from our school's yard for quite some time. With out reading/math buddies, we had a good hike and a lot of fun playing on the equipment.
Just before the break we finished up our science unit on objects, materials and structures. We discussed and explored how an object's structure helps it stand, move and stabilize - from a tent's poles to our body's skeleton - and along the way we discovered that the way the object is constructed is just as important as the materials it is made of. We found that the greater the area of the structure touching the ground, the more stable it will be. We also found that arches and triangles make structures stronger. Here are the kids trying to build card houses. . . not as easy as they thought! They worked at it a long time and quite a few of them went back to try again when they had some spare time over the next few days. My oh my, I think I may have caught a couple of leprechauns! These shenanigans certainly helped liven up the last day of school before March Break! The whole school was in great spirit, and our fundraising event for the Windsor Police Association's Camp Brombal was lots of fun! Click on over to the school website and check it out on the 'Events' page!
Having spent the entire first term working on our number sense all the way to one hundred by exploring patterns on the 100 chart, the natural progression is to learn about place value. We've been using the abacus every single day since September and the kids, for the most part, do recognize numbers as represented on it. That's a great start! We've moved on to using rods (ten cubes joined together) and cubes to represent tens and ones. We've been enjoying a lot of different activities, but pictured below is a favourite. The kids are playing in pairs. Each player picks a number card from the pile, then uses the rods and cubes to represent their number. The spinner then determines who the winner is by landing on 'more', 'less' or 'equal' (if the numbers are equal and the spinner lands on that, each player receives two points). A big favourite on the Smartboard is the game 'Pop Penguin and the Place Value Race'. You can find it by clicking on the 'Links for Fun and Learning' tab and then on the 'Place Value' button.
This was a fantastic field trip! The kids loved using all of the equipment and very few of them complained of being tired after an hour and a half of active fun! |
About Mrs. C.Mrs. Cuckovic, or "Mrs. C." as she's called, is a retired educator who spent a long and varied career with the Greater Essex County District School Board in Windsor, Ontario. Archives
November 2020
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