Hard at Work!



Decimal Addition to 500



It's amazing how hard students will work when a game and a little friendly competition are involved.  

My students practiced adding decimal numbers with a game I found on Math Teaching Resources called Decimal Addition to 500.  This site has several games and hands-on activities all aligned with the Common Core Standards.   

All you needed to play this game was a deck of playing cards.  I added the red counters, so my students could separate the whole number from the decimal.  The students draw 3 cards and make a 3 digit decimal number.  Even numbers are whole numbers and odd numbers are decimals.  They draw 3 more cards and add their two numbers together.  The first player to reach 500 is the winner.  The complete instructions can be found on the web site. 

Hard at Work

 I really like that there are games using Base 10 blocks to really teach the concepts of place value.  We also played Base Ten Decimal Bag Addition and Subtraction.  It was very easy to see why place value is important when you are subtracting decimals (that was our Essential Question). I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I kept getting the wrong answer to a student's problem.  Then it finally dawned on me that I was subtracting .02 on paper when the student had actually pulled out .2 from the bag.  Talk about a teachable moment!