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AN INVESTIGATION INTO BASE 10 GROUPINGS

DAY 8

Understanding the Scale of Base 10 Groups 

Key Mathematical Ideas

  • Use the Linear Abacus® to model base 10 groups (ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands).

  • Develop an understanding of the efficiency of the base 10 place value system.

  • Engage in visual thinking and reasoning about place value.

Exploration

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 Make and name each of the groups in the base 10 numeral system using the Linear Abacus®.

1.    Explain how the groups are formed
2.    Describe how they will orientate the beads to make the base 10 groups
3.    Use the abacus models to give a name to the base 10 groups

 

Children should lay each group side by side, starting with the group called the 'ones' placed furthest to the right as shown on the following page. You can use a single block to represent this group (these are sold on our website).​​​

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Share their creative thinking on our Mathematics Community Forum

Support

Provide a visual reference sheet showing the first few base 10 groups (ones, tens, hundreds) to help students get started. An example is provided on page 42 of our book. 

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Extension

Ask children to predict what the next base 10 group after thousands would be and how many beads or strings it would contain. By this stage children should be visualising the groups- not making them as this would be an arduous task. This is why you need to encourage them to talk about the general rule used to create the base 10 groups. In our Concise Manual- there is a comic strip which shows how children can think creatively to represent large numbers and make connections to the metric units of length. This can be used as a formative assessment- where children explore the comic and solve the problems. â€‹â€‹

Micro Writing Task

Complete day 8 of your journal. For parents and teachers this prompt encourages children to have a dialogue with themselves. To help children ask them to think out loud as they solve the problems in the task. Some prompts to guide their writing:

"This reminds me of..."

"I figured out ___ by..."

"I changed my thinking about ___ when..."

 

The key is for children to understand the scale of this number system and its efficiency in representing numbers. This is particularly useful when they explore other number systems (section 13).

 

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