Launch lesson

This lesson built upon ideas discussed in fractions lessons but particularly in counting in fractions.

I revisited the question 'What's between 1 and 2? What about 0 and 1?

The children talked about splitting the number line into ten and then counted in tenths as fractions then decimals. We then did a chant that I like to do which goes (very simply) "0.1 is one tenth, 0.2 is two tenths....!" and so on, with lots of actions involving punching the air for the decimal point.

Once we had counted in tenths, I said, what about if we zoom in on 0 - 0.1. What would be in between?

A couple of super-whizzy mathematicians said 'hundredths!' and then we did the same as above but with hundredths.

They then wanted to continue 'zooming in!' so we went as far as thousandths and they could really notice the pattern then.

We discussed what was happening each time, and some children thought the numbers were getting bigger but then we discussed (with the use of concrete resources) how they were actually getting 10x smaller each time.

These are the resources I used to demonstrate: