Counting by Tens Matters: A Next Step in Place Value Understanding

Hello, Happy Numbers family! We’re so glad you are enjoying our website and we’re excited to bring you a new topic to share with your students! Today, Happy Numbers released our newest topic, Numeration 21-100, to help bring young learners to the next level of mastery in numeracy.

 

The 22 interactive exercises build on previous topics to address several important skills:

 

– Counting

– Comparison

– Rounding

– Composition of 2-digit numbers

– Basics of +/- with 2-digit numbers

 

Numeration 21-100 is available today in your account. Here are some highlights of what you’ll find:

 

Once your students have mastered the topic Counting by Tens, they will be ready to move on to more advanced 2-digit counting exercises. Relying on their understanding of place value, we approach counting past 20 from two different angles. First, students count objects grouped into tens (and leftover ones) to determine the quantity:

 

Next, they use manipulatives to represent a given quantity in tens and ones:

 

As you can see, they will be using familiar rods, cubes, boxes of fruit, and the number line:

 

Happy Numbers helps your students master inequalities with 2-digit numbers by modeling them with cubes:

 

or using the number line:

What can be ‘greater than’ that?!

 

This skill is new to our course, but your students’ familiarity with the number line will support their learning. Here, they will learn what a round number is and how to find the closest round number to a given 2-digit number:

 

Recently we wrote a post that explores the many ways Happy Numbers builds understanding of number bonds. In our new topic, students learn to decompose 2-digit numbers into the sum of tens and ones. This essential skill will lead to fluency in addition and subtraction of 2-digit numbers:

 

Our topic on 2-digit addition and subtraction is coming soon, but we begin building the foundation here. These simple exercises, using base-10 blocks to support understanding, will prepare your students for the skills to come:

 

Try these exercises for yourself using Happy Numbers’ “try the topic as a student” feature. Then, add them to your students’ accounts with just one click of the mouse. If you like, use our new differentiation option to add these exercises just for students who are ready. Enjoy this next step in early numeracy learning and stay tuned for our next release: Plus and Minus 21-100!

 

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Yours,
Happy Numbers Team