Place Value continued....

We will have another short week this week.

We will continue our work on place value, reviewing the names of the places, and look at the actual value of digits in numbers. 

At home this week you could try asking your child about the different values of the digit 2 in a number such as 222. Can your child tell you how each digit is different (has a different value)? Can your child illustrate how to make this number? Your child might draw Base Ten blocks or what we practiced last week was making a number by drawing a bag of buttons, for example, that holds 100 buttons, and then smaller bags that hold 10 buttons, and individual buttons for ones.

One thing to remember is that in answer to the question above, your child could draw 22 bags of 10 buttons along with 2 individual buttons and that would be an acceptable answer. It is important to understand that a number can be made in different ways. In fact, understanding that helps a lot when it comes to adding and subtracting with regrouping, which we will be focusing on soon.

Check out the Websites tab above for a link to the game "Pop Penguin and the Place Value Race." There are different levels to this game which provides practice with various place value concepts. Your child can choose whatever s/he is comfortable with. It's never a bad thing though to try out the next level up, especially if a lower level is easy.

Have a great week!

Place Value and Number Sense Basics

We began talking about place value with 3-digit numbers last week. This week we will look at 4-digit numbers. In other words, place value to the thousands place.

At home, practicing making numbers using playing cards or rolling dice would be helpful. Have your child read the numbers that are created. REMEMBER NOT TO SAY "AND"!

Create numbers with your child that s/he is comfortable saying. If 2-digit numbers are what s/he is comfortable with right now, go with that, then begin to introduce 3-digit numbers. Likewise, if your child is already comfortable with 3- and 4-digit numbers, move on to 5- and 6-digit numbers.

Another outcome that children in Grade 3 are expected to meet is to be able to correctly write in number form a number that is read-aloud to them. For example, if you say "three hundred fourteen" your child needs to be able to write the number "314". If you try this, be sure to include numbers with "internal" zeros, such as 204 (say "two hundred four") or 5078 (five thousand seventy-eight) or  1605  (one thousand six hundred five). These ones tend to be tricky for children.

As well as saying and writing numbers, we will continue our work naming the place value names of various digits in a number. For example, the place value of the one in  2139 is the "hundreds" place. More practice with this at home would be helpful.

For basic number sense review, please ask your child to tell you the number that is:

• one less than or one more than a given number
• two less than or two more than a given number

Using the numbers from 1 - 100 are fine to use for this, but you can go higher if your child is comfortable with that.

Practicing doubles would be great too! Stick with smaller numbers (1 - 9) and 10s (from 10 - 50).

If your child would benefit from using a hundreds chart to help with some of this number sense review, there are lots of hundreds charts available online. Here is a link to some: Online hundreds charts

While you're at it, never miss an opportunity to have your child do some skip counting!! Whatever you need counted, have your child count in groups of 2, 5, or 10.

Have a great week!

Welcome to My Grade 3 Math CHAMPS Blog!

Welcome to my Grade 3 Math CHAMPS blog!

Through this blog I will try to keep you up-to-date on a weekly basis about what we are working on in class.

Two months have now gone by and we are getting ready to prepare report cards and meet with parents in parent-teacher interviews. I can let you know that these first two months have seen us focusing on patterns as well as a mixture of other skills and activities, including a short introductory fractions unit, which have helped me get to know the students as mathematicians. We do have quite a diverse class with students working at different levels. 

PLACE VALUE

Today, we began our look at place value, which is an important outcome in number sense, and is related to representing numbers, another outcome that we will be exploring soon. For place value in Grade 3, students will be expected to "illustrate, concretely and pictorially, the meaning of place value for numerals to 1000."

A Place Value Card Game        

To reinforce at home what we're doing at school you can have your child use playing cards to create the least or greatest numbers that s/he can. Each of you take 2 - 4 cards and arrange them to make the least or greatest 2 - 4 digit number. Compare the two numbers you have made and decide whose is the least or the greatest. Maybe they will be equal and this will be important for your child to recognize as well.

Online Base Ten Blocks

If you do not mind your child using online math games and resources, check out the Base Ten blocks available on ABCYA. The link included in the "Websites" tab. Students can drag and drop Base Ten blocks to create 4-digit numbers. Give your child some numbers to make using these Base Ten blocks. Start with the lowest numbers you need to (yes, even 1-digit    numbers) until your child is comfortable making numbers.

Please note: there may be differences in how we are expected to teach the recording and reading of numbers compared to what you were taught.

1.  For 4-digit numbers, students are not to use a comma between the first two numbers, nor are they to use a space, ex., they must not write 3,467 or 3 467. The way I will be teaching them to write 4-digit numbers will be like this: 3467.

2. When students are saying numbers, they are not to use the word "and". For example, they must not say "three hundred and fifty." The "and" is reserved for decimal numbers, so for a number like 350, they must say "three hundred fifty."

I do realize that in many books you will see commas in numbers and may see the space between digits in the thousand and hundred places. Students will also hear adults and others say "and" when reading a number. Still, I am expected to teach the recording and saying of numbers in the ways explained above.