Direct Instruction
At the beginning of the year I really focus on place value, as it is an essential building block for maths. If students have big gaps in their PV understanding, they will really struggle with concepts like fractions and decimals. I spend quite a lot of time on PV, really breaking down what they are doing and why. I emphasise the word 'exchange' for their 10's/1's transactions so they can explain their thinking more accurately, without being confused by 'taking away' (because you aren't taking away, you are moving the numbers around).
I use place value counters/tokens which I created last year as a resource. They are available here; just print, laminate and cut.
For other videos of how I have used these, see here.
These students were struggling to explain verbally what they were doing, so that was our focus. Exchanging correctly, and talking about what we did correctly.
