Teaching Place Value

Boy, my blog post titles sure are snazzy lately, huh? At least you know what's coming!

Today I have an easy peasy thing we've been calling "Show Me's" on my team. I have no idea what they're really called. A friend showed these to me a few years ago - they are very simple and very effective.

It's just a piece of card stock folded up and stapled on the sides to make a pocket. These are laminated but you don't need to laminate them if you use a strong card stock. Inside the pocket are small strips that are numbered 0-9 on the top and bottom (different numbers on each end).  Ideally, you'd like enough for each child to have one. To start, the kids take out all of the strips and on your verbal command, they add them back in to create the number you've just asked for.

So, to get the result of 214 as in the picture above,  you could have asked the kids:
• Show me the number two hundred fourteen
• Show me a number with a 2 in the hundreds place, a one in the tens place and a 4 in the ones place
• Show me a number less than 220
• Show me a number greater than 210
• Show me an even number between 200 and 220
• Show me a number where the ones digit is twice as many as hundreds digit
Those are just a few examples - pretty versatile little tool, right? This week I'm going to have the kids come up with number clues and let them take turns leading the class. Should be fun! I'll keep you posted.