Place Value

Strand: Number
Outcome: 5

Step 5: Follow-up on Assessment

Guiding Questions

What conclusions can be made from assessment information?
How effective have instructional approaches been?
What are the next steps in instruction?

A. Addressing Gaps in Learning

Students who have difficulty with place value may not understand how numbers work. They may need more experience with counting large collections, reading and writing numbers, ordering numbers and grouping to count.

For example:

Have students continue to create their own base ten materials, and use linking cubes to compose and decompose groupings of 10 and 10 tens. Encourage students who seem to use base ten materials without understanding to count sets both by ones, and by ones, tens and hundreds to show that the count is the same.
Allow students to use base ten materials and place value cards when figuring out problems involving 2- and 3-digit numbers.
Encourage students to use base ten materials and place value cards when filling in their number roll to create a visual understanding of magnitude of large numbers.
Allow students to use their number rolls as reference materials to order cards printed with non-sequential 3-digit numbers.
Have students talk about their understanding of the magnitude of numbers and how numbers are written. Ask questions that prompt students to explain their thinking and the rules they are applying as they write, record, compose, decompose and use 3-digit numbers.

Have students use the constant function on a calculator to count up by ones, and encourage them to predict what comes next, especially as they transition between hundreds, and between, for example, 109 and 110, 209 and 210, and subsequent numbers into the teens and twenties of each hundred.

B. Reinforcing and Extending Learning

Students who have achieved or exceeded the outcomes will benefit from ongoing opportunities to apply and extend their learning. These activities should support students in developing a deeper understanding of the concept and should not progress to the outcomes in subsequent grades.

Consider strategies, such as the following.

Use a chart to illustrate the place value pattern of naming numbers through the thousands and into the millions. Have students copy this chart and extend it into the billions and trillions.
Have students research the naming of numbers greater than one trillion according to the North American numbering system.
Have students, who have a clear understanding of the North American numbering system, research the Indian and British numbering systems and make up a guide or table to show how the same number would be named in the three different systems. How might the different definitions of the meaning of a billion be confusing for people who use either the British system or the North American system but read the same news stories? Students can make up an activity for their classmates (and teachers) to translate different number names between the systems.

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