Place Value & Number Sense Again (Still?)

Oh place value and number sense.  I'm just calling it 4.NBT.2 from now on because I feel like we've spent so much time on it that I am going to officially call it and every other standard that I have by its Common Core number just so that I can feel important when I'm speaking in my teacher language to people.

We actually already covered this at the beginning of the year, but I have a few that are still struggling just a bit.  They can name the place value just fine, but they are still mixing up the value or meaning of the place value.  It's such an important concept to really understand, especially in fourth grade when we start 2x2 and 2x3 multiplication and long division.  We have to move past the "magic zeros" that we bring down and really understand what that really means.

I found a wonderful little flip chart over the summer at {Lakeshore Learning Resources} that I grabbed for guided math time.  It's small and easy to grab for guided math.  I like to have the kids make up numbers to use for place value and number forms, practice reading it, and then do some number work with the number they chose.  I like the beauty in the idea that you can pick whatever number you want and this will work.  Just a little bit of math ownership.  It also gives me an idea of how confident they are with the concept.  They sometimes struggle with coming up with a number, so this has been great.  Nothing earth shattering, but helpful all the same.

Awhile ago I blogged about how I conveniently lost my hundred thousands card for my bulletin board display so I took it upon myself to just create a new one.  You can find it {here} or click on the picture below.

I'm so glad I did this!  The kids refer to it all the time and my old one didn't have the ones, thousands, and millions period markers and we use a ton!  Whew.  Good call on my part.

Finally some of my struggling learners are getting this and we're starting to feel confident with it.  Yes!  Now we just need to work on capitalizing the letter I...

oh my goodness I love it!

I was also looking for center activities that would be challenging for those higher kids and I ran across this file from the {Virginia Department of Education on Numbers and Number Sense}.  I'm a bit of a scavenger when it comes to finding free materials for the classroom.  This was PERFECT!  I ran it off on colored paper, sliced and diced, and my centers and guided math activities are ready to go for now AND in the future when we hit decimal place values.   Check it out {here} or the link above.

Since we've already covered place value and number forms this year, I went ahead and made the above game into center activities during guided math time.  I also added my {spoons number sense game} and the kids are LOVING IT.  It took a few times to get into how to play quietly, but we got it and it has been fabulous.  They have requested a spoons game for prefixes and suffixes, so I'll be working on that soon!

            

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