How I Got My Daughter to Stop Writing 501 as 5001 in 10 Minutes

Writing numbers correctly is often a struggle for young kids.  Most kids can say the numbers but when they go to write them down the way we write numbers doesn’t align with how we say them.  This causes confusion in our students and is one of the reasons students lack place value.  In this post I will share with you how my 1st grade daughter struggled with writing numbers (she would write 501 as 1500 and as 5001) and how I helped her in one night, while I was cooking diner (aka…I really didn’t do much, it was all because of the tool I had her use).

So, this all came about just this week.  My mom was watching my two school aged children when they got home from school.  When I got home, my daughter, Sierra, couldn’t wait to show me all the numbers she had written in her journal while she was home with Grandma.  She handed me her journal and as I took a look she said, “I know that I was doing it wrong to start with and then I changed it to the right way towards the end.”  This is what I saw:

I am used to seeing kids write numbers similar to her “correct way”…she was trying to write 504, but wrote it 5004…How many of you have seen that in your classroom???

However, the way she knew was incorrect, I had to ask her about.  She said “Well, I put 400 then put a 1 in front.”  So in that first picture she has 401 written as 1400, 501 as 1500, 801 as 1800 and so on.  And seriously it was on and on…she filled up almost a whole page before I got home, all the while writing the numbers incorrectly (even when she thought she had changed to the “correct way”).

So, how did I help her?  I pulled out my favorite tool for helping kids understand Place Value…Place Value Cards!  These are also known as Hide Zero Cards or a variation is known as Arrow Cards.

The image above shows her modeling 13 using the cards, but it wasn’t easy for her to start out with.  She was fine showing 1-10, but when she got to 11 she wanted two of the 1 cards.  I asked her “What is a 1 and 1?”  Her response was “Eleven.”  So we talked for a minute about what really makes 11, how it isn’t made from 1 and 1, because when you put 1 and 1 together it makes 2.  She caught on very quickly as the cards helped her to see 11 as 10 and 1. Then, while I was cooking dinner, she continued making numbers, writing them in her journal (correctly this time), all the while building her place value:

The cool part about the cards is that in the upper left corner is the VALUE of each digit.  So when she puts the 90 and the 1 together she sees it as 91, but can also see it as 90 and 1.  She continued on building numbers correctly until 110, and this is what she put together:

It looks correct, right??? But, let’s zoom in a little closer to see how she actually made that number:

Now when this happened my husband said she was right…I said she was wrong.  We got into a little debate about it :).  I see his side that, symbolically, she is showing 110 correctly, BUT she isn’t showing me understanding of place value…she used the 100 and the 1 to show 110.  Often we get wrapped up in helping kids to write numbers in “standard form” but when they do write numbers in that form, they loose the value of the digits.  I am such a big fan of these cards because children get to see the standard form of a number but they ALSO get to build their place value understandings.  Here is my daughter explaining how she showed 153:

Now, I know she is using the value written at the top to help her say the numbers…but that’s what you want.  In the early grades we need to build that solid foundation of the value of the numbers so that when we move to just the standard form students know the value of each numeral.  I love that these cards help kids see the value while also seeing how to write the number in standard form.  I’ve already heard my daughter getting better at reading larger numbers.  Like 134…it’s not 1, 3, 4 anymore when she says the number…it has turned into 100-30-4…YEAH!!!

And just an FYI, I did not make her sit down and go until 153.  She just kept doing it, all night.  We had to make her put the cards away during diner. 🙂

If you like the idea of these cards, there is a wonderful app for Apple devices called Montessori Place Value.  It is not free, but it is great!  I sell sets of these Place Value Cards on my website, but if you are looking for FREE, you can sign up to receive my template for all the cards (1-1000).  Just click HERE for the download and you can make your own sets.

Leave me a comment and let me know if you’ve used Place Value Cards before.  How did they work for your students?  Do you have other ways to help kids learn to write numbers which also help them understand the numbers??