Teaching expanded form to intervention groups is tough! Have you ever had a math small group that no matter what strategies you tried to teach digit value or expanded form, they just couldn’t seem to get it? Yep, me too! This week actually with second graders during intervention block. We used base ten blocks until we saw blocks in our dreams or at least I did…
Place Value Stacking Cards – Until it hit me, why not show the value of each digit using stacking cards!
I introduced stack cards with just tens and ones. While students still struggled with numbers such as 12 and 18 (they still want to say its 18 ones instead of 1 ten and 8 ones), overall they really seemed to finally understand value and expanded notation. I then started slowly introducing hundreds, tens, and ones. We modeled the numbers with blocks (AGAIN!!!) and then stacked the cards to make the numbers. Amazing things happened this time, they GOT IT! Do you need these for your own classroom? Click here!
While we saw amazing gains and understanding this week, I’m not quite ready to move on to thousands, so we will continue this week reviewing. I found this amazing pin this morning on Pinterest that I think you will love as well! I will be making these today for Monday’s lesson!
Love this? Then you should follow my Pinterest Boards for more ideas and ways to integrate hands on learning in your math small groups as well.
