Download Print Version
Font:

Place Value

Strand: Number
Outcome: 5

Step 1: Identify Outcomes to Address

Guiding Questions

• What do I want my students to learn?
• What can my students currently understand and do?
• What do I want my students to understand and be able to do, based on the Big Ideas and specific outcomes in the program of studies?

See Sequence of Outcomes from the Program of Studies

Big Ideas

• Place value refers to the idea that the place a digit occupies in a number affects its magnitude.
• In order to understand place value, students must be able to unitize. In other words they must be able to think of groups of numbers (e.g., tens) as units in and of themselves, while maintaining awareness of the total magnitude of each group (one 10 is the same as 10 ones).
• There are patterns in the way a number is said and written that communicates the magnitude of each digit and illustrates the meaning of place value.
• Successive places in a number represent successive powers of 10.
• Zero acts as a place holder in the written place value system.
• Digits in a given place are multiplied by the appropriate power of 10 to arrive at their actual value in that number.
• Values of digits are added together to get the total value of a number.
• Numbers can be thought of and taken apart in different ways. For example, 967 can be thought of as 9 hundreds, 6 tens and 7 ones. It can be grouped as 96 tens and 7 ones or
  9 hundreds and 67 ones. It can also be partitioned in many different ways; for example, as
  8 hundreds, 14 tens and 27 ones.
• An understanding of place value must be developed in relationship to concrete and visual representations of actual numbers and quantities.