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Amy Lemons

Amy Lemons provides teaching tips and resources for teachers of elementary school students with access to a free resource library.

Place Value Tips!

Happy Saturday, friends! It’s finally looking like I’m on the mends (coughing-wise) after I *almost*got kicked out of the movie, Dolphin Tale 2, by my own family last night, ha!  Goodness, this throat tickle would just not go away!  Last night was the first good night’s sleep that I had all week, so I’m feeling refreshed and ready to go!
This week we dove right into place value with 2-digit numbers.  I must say that I’m pretty impressed with the background knowledge my students had and what they retained from first grade.  Having a good foundation will make working with larger numbers so much easier!
I’m here to offer you a few tips to make your place value (or any math unit for that matter) more engaging and fun for your students!
If you don’t have place value dice, you need them ASAP!  We use them all year long.  You can find them HERE and HERE.  We used Rebecca Anderton’s roll it!  make it!  expand it!  FREEBIE.
 Remember when I told you about the number bean bags I purchased, well they got their fair share of use this week!  I threw 2 bean bags out to my kiddos, they came up to make a number, and then I had other students come up to my easel to write the standard form, expanded form, number word, and draw the base ten blocks.  They loved being the numbers and the teacher!
 It seems like I’m always running behind with one of my classes.  Well, I still needed to do the Mudge portraits with one class and I remembered that I had these paw prints in my Place Value unit… Mudge and paw prints go perfectly together!  My kiddos made their Place Value Paw Print and drew their Mudge to display on their lockers.  
 Early in the week we were working on identifying and counting base ten blocks.  My original plan was for my students just to count up the blocks and write the number shown,  Well, one of my teammates asked if they were going to order the numbers and I hadn’t even thought about that!  So, I gave my students base ten block pictures and a sentence strip and my kiddos identified and ordered the numbers!  We could have even taken it a step further and done even/odd, expanded form, number words, etc!
 My students absolutely LOVED Place Value Bull’s Eye from Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants.  I didn’t have enough paperclips so I passed out foam shapes… anything you have will work!
 We finished the week with a little Place Value Pocket Book!  I love that my kiddos can already put these things together without step by step instructions from me!  This was a great way to take a grade and check for understanding.  
Who needs worksheets and boring textbooks when there are so many fun and engaging activities out there to choose from?!  Get your kiddos up and moving… and I promise you won’t regret it!
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Comments

  2. Dalynn Holling says

    I just saw on TPT that you're almost to 20,000 followers! Congratulations! My 3rd graders are in bad need of some review so I'm checking out your store tonight to see what I can find. 🙂 Feel better!

  5. Linda says

    As always, I just love your ideas! Thank you for sharing about the place value dice. I definitely need some of those and I think they are the only kind of dice I don't already have! (I have a slight dice addiction. :0)

    Linda
    AroundtheKampfire

  9. Rachel C. says

    HI Amy!

    Where do you find the base ten block pictures that you used with your order/sentence strip activity? Definitely would like to do this in class:)