Understand the Place Value System (whole numbers)

Prior to Lesson: Collect number cards, 0 to 9. These can be made or playing cards may be used as well. Students should be placed in pairs at similar academic levels.

1. Instruct students to create a place value chart or print the one below to use.

2. Each player is dealt the number of cards as places in their chart. In the chart above, students would be dealt 9 cards.

3. The students are charged with placing the cards to create a number. The greatest number wins the round. A player receives a point for every round won.

4. After several rounds of the game has been played, pull students back together as a group. Discuss strategies on how to obtain the greatest number. "Why did you make the 9 worth nine hundred million rather than ninety million?"

5. Use the Questioning Prompt Guide to help focus the discussion on how each place value is worth ten times the one prior to it and 10 times less or one tenth the one following.

6. Extension: This activity can lead directly into writing numbers in exponential and expanded form.

Focus Content Area Standards

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.5.NBT.A.1

Recognize that in a multi-digit number, a digit in one place represents 10 times as much as it represents in the place to its right and 1/10 of what it represents in the place to its left.

Standards for Mathematical Practice

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP2 Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP5 Use appropriate tools strategically.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP6 Attend to precision.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP7 Look for and make use of structure.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP8 Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.