Students use place value charts and base-10 blocks to model places up to 1,000. The class talks about the relationship between one place and another; students may say, for example, that 7 hundreds is 10 times as much as 7 tens. (ie, 700 = 10 x 70) 3 thousands is 100 times as much as 3 tens. (ie, 3,000 = 100 x 30)
Once students are comfortable building numbers with base-10 blocks and explaining the relationships between the places, they are ready to use pictures.
Next, students use place value discs with the charts. They start by physically using the discs, and then they draw them with circles. At first, we stay within the thousands. Once students are comfortable, we move to the ten-thousands, hundred-thousands, and millions.