Place Value- The Foundation of Math Skills

Through my years of teaching and working with kids on math, I've found that strong place value skills are the most important foundation for math success. Helping so many students to get a solid grasp on place value is one of my most proud math educator accomplishments. I recently had one of my current tutoring students turn the corner from tens and ones not making much sense, to being able to work with tens and ones with some ease. It was so exciting, and inspired me to write this blog post about the evolution of my place value instruction.

I was lucky enough to have an amazing teaching math class while doing my Master's degree in elementary education. One of my favorite memories from the class is when our professor had us do an exercise with using base 8 instead of base 10 when working through problems. It was so hard! She eventually let us use manipulatives, which made it a lot easier. This activity led to a conversation about how difficult the concept of place value can be for young learners and how important manipulatives and visuals can be to helping them gain understanding.

When I started teaching a class for third to fifth graders with academic delays, I quickly noticed that many of my students didn't understand place value. I tried working with them using base ten blocks, but the blocks often became distracting, as they make great toys. For years, the district I was teaching in didn't have a math curriculum, so I had to get creative when it came to my math instruction. I searched online and ended up finding a set of place value resources with great visuals and a very gradual progression of place value skills. I started using them with my students, and found that for the majority of my students, by the end of the series of worksheets, they were comfortably working with tens and ones. There were a few students that were still struggling with the concepts and even accessing how to do the worksheets and I wasn't sure how to help them. Then I watched one of the staff assistants in my classroom color coding a worksheet to help a student distinguish between the tens and the ones, and I realized that was the extra support that many students needed. For 9 years since then, I've used these same worksheets to teach place value, often color coding them to help students. They're one of my favorite examples of a tried and true, that's never failed me or my students. I will be forever grateful to Miss Giraffe of Teachers Pay Teachers, the brilliant creator of this place value unit.

An exciting part of taking this time to step away from the classroom and into this tutoring business is the renewed energy to get creative with my instruction. I've just created my own place value unit, with the color coding and other little tricks I've learned in my 9 years of teaching place value this way. I'm so excited to start using it with my tutoring students.