Teaching Strategies for Learning Place Value in Mathematics

Mathematics

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
What is place value and importance for students to learn about numbers...................................3
Information about diagnostic interviews and their purpose in teaching......................................4
Issue faced by student while learning about place value.............................................................4
Place value issue in Australian curriculum .................................................................................5
Strategies to solve problem that student face while learning about place value..........................6
Key task to help student in learning place value .........................................................................9
Other effective tasks to consolidate learning around issue regarding place value.....................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Mathematics is the science of numbers and their operations that increases number sense
among students (Lample and Charton, 2019). This study is going to discuss concept of place
value and importance of teaching students in mathematics. It will further discuss ways in which
diagnostic interview can help students in deepen their knowledge as it makes teachers able to
know their students’ knowledge. It will further discuss some issues, faced by students while
learning about place values, first stage of understanding and achievements. It shows some
effective teaching strategies, activities as well as sub activities of solving issues that students face
regarding place value.
What is place value and importance for students to learn about numbers
In mathematics, place value refers the value of each digit. By teaching about place value,
students can be made able to make a foundation for multi digit multiplication and re grouping. In
other words, it can be said that place value refers the position of each digit in the whole number.
For example: 250, here 5 represents tens and accordingly value of 5 will be 50. It can be
understood better with more examples such as: 4005. Here 4 represents 4 thousand or 4000.
Value of a digit depends on the place where it is in the number and that is why it is called place
value (Benton and et.al., 2018).
Some reasons of teaching place value to students at early stage include:
 By understanding place value, students can write numbers in expanded form and place
value helps them out in reading numbers in a correct manner.
 It helps them understanding about prices and they can buy some stuff as per their own.
They can identify the difference between $50 and $500 by knowing value of digits.
 It helps them out in solving some reasoning based problems.
Learning through constructivist approach for long term math
Constructive approach is one of the best way of teaching mathematics to students. This
approach believe that mathematical knowledge cannot be transferred as it is practical one. For
increasing knowledge, students need to construct by themselves. This approach can be used in
teaching place value to students as this approach can help students to deepen their knowledge
beyond rote memorization and taking command of the learning process as an active participant.

Information about diagnostic interviews and their purpose in teaching
In regard to diagnostic assessment, it can be said that it is a pre-assessment that teachers
give to their students in order to know about students’ strengths, weaknesses, skills and
knowledge. It helps teachers out in knowing grasping and knowledge of each students and
accordingly they can make use of teaching strategies. In addition, it can be said that diagnostic
teaching can make students able to understand, detect and correcting misconception in their
work. There are number of reasons that shows effectiveness and reasons of taking diagnostic
interview such as: Nowadays, due to pandemic, teachers are facing problems in understanding
students’ understanding of math and for knowing how strong is their students’ number sense,
teachers can make use of this interview (Amin, 2018).
Before teaching about place value, teachers can take this interview and can know existing
as well as basic knowledge of students that they have regarding numbers. By knowing basic
knowledge of students with the help of this interviews, teachers can teach as per the curriculum
accordingly. it can save their time and energy. Questions regarding place value and number sense
can be used accordingly. Overall, it can be said that diagnostic interview gives basic knowledge
of students regarding number sense.
Issue faced by student while learning about place value
In this video, it is seen that all 10-15 students are taking interest in learning place value.
The main problem that is common and students often face is knowing the difference between
face value and place value. Along with this, they become confuse in identifying which number
has tens and which number has thousands place value (Dziuban and et.al., 2018). Teacher makes
use of an effective way of solving this issue. In this video, teacher made a funny face on the top
of the long paper that has 10 sections. He made separate single papers with funny face. Firstly,
he made students aware about value of paper. He told that paper that has smiley refers 1 and
without smiley face of paper is considered as normal number. He asked students to come on
stage and teach other students. When students teach others then they are more likely to
understand the main concept. So, on this basis, it can be said that teacher considered the main
issue in this video as he made emoji for presenting number as face value.