Math Log – Place Value Day 6 * Evil Math Wizard

Reading and Saying Numbers

Day 6 and going strong! A deep understanding of Place Value is crucial for math conceptual knowledge, so I take my time and do a variety of activities so that students have a variety of ways to make connections. Here is what we did today, reading numbers. I find that saying numbers is also important for understanding place value.

I explained that even though there are six hundreds, we say six hundred. Moving from the right to left (it’s opposite from reading) the first comma lets us know that next is thousands, the next comma separates the thousands from the millions, and the next comma separates the millions from the billions. Between each common is three digits and we say those three digits like we say the first three digits, only adding thousand, million, etc afterwards. The words match the place value, so we “expanded” the numbers to show that too. Here is a video that you could use later to reinforce this –

https://youtu.be/963IUfaH7b0

I also talked about how mathematicians don’t use AND, like saying “one hundred and fifty three.” We will learn when to say AND for the decimal point, so I talk briefly about the decimal point for money like one dollar AND 35 cents.

We then discussed why it’s important to be able to read and write numbers, which led to getting a job, which led to taking orders over the phone, which conveniently led to one of my student’s favorite activities, Papa John’s Pizza.

It’s simple. I pretend to be a customer calling Papa John’s. A student is the employee taking the order over the phone. We are both up in front of the class. I am sitting down, with this on my lap, but you can use a whiteboard. It’s just a good visual to help students see place value. It goes up to millions, but I didn’t get the whole thing in the picture.

The “employee” is facing the whiteboard and can’t see my number. So I “call” Papa John’s. (We talk about good phone etiquette.) And the employee answers “Thank you for calling Papa John’s, my name is________, how can I help you?” I answer “I would like to order two thousand three hundred sixty four pizzas.” The employee writes the number on the whiteboard for everyone to see. They can say “Can you please repeat your order?” When finished, they repeat the order back to me. “Thank you for your order of two thousand three hundred sixty four pizzas.” Of course I might have to magically see through my phone line to hint at any corrections.

I do before hand ask the new employee what training level they want: new employee (three digits), middle employee (4-5 digits), pro employee (5-6 digits), boss (7-digits, with a lot of zeros).

It’s also fun to ask how much it will costs, or I say “I have a coupon for $2 a pizza, how much would that cost?” Or you can be silly and say “I am buying a pizza for every kid in school, so I need ____.” The differentiation and options are endless. (This activity is part of my Place Value kit.)

So after our discussion, they move to their stations. I sat down with the Building Numbers group. I had the students clean up about ten minutes earlier than normal so I could do another reading numbers activity. We gathered on the rug in front of the whiteboard, and we talked about all the place we see numbers, cars, books, addresses, maps, everywhere! So I played a slideshow of pictures I took of a variety of numbers on places literally throughout the world, we said the numbers as we saw them. They really enjoyed that.