The bee's knees of place value resources

When I taught Year 1/2 I created an activity that was the ‘bee's knees’ of place value. It was engaging and ensured place value was on the agenda every day! Since then, I have shared my idea with thousands of teachers in my 'Developing a Whole School Approach to Place Value' PD sessions. Teachers have commented how they love the idea...but it looks hard to re-create (which is true!).

I believe in this resource so strongly that I decided to embark on the 'journey' (and it has been a journey with lots of twists and turns!) to have it manufactured so schools could purchase it for classrooms.

Finally, my idea has become a reality. In this blog I introduce you to my 'Target 1000 Place Value Pockets'.

In terms of place value teaching and learning, Year 1 and 2 are critical.

Year 1 is our first formal introduction to the abstract world of place value, and Year 2 is when we are required to consolidate and build so we can apply our knowledge in the context of 3-digit numbers.

Some students are just developing an understanding of 2-digit numbers in Year 1/2. While others, recognise the patterns and are ready to run!

I find the 'gap' between students quickly widens in Year 1/2 and this 'gap' has a strong correlation with their level of place value understanding. 

Over and over, I have observed both Year 1 and 2 students who just don't 'get' place value. And if this is the case, it is really difficult for them to 'catch up' in Years 3-6 when we are rapidly moving onto larger whole numbers and decimals.

As I have said many times before, place value is a very abstract system that is both additive and multiplicative! For some students, they are just not developmentally ready for this type of thinking at 6-8 years of age. 

But this doesn't mean that with age and learning stage appropriate concrete representations, and lots and lots of repetition they can't get there.

Some students require more experiences than others, but as teachers, it is our role to do our best to provide these opportunities for our students.

Even back in the early 2000's, I knew the importance of repetition and retrieval practice (although I didn't call it that back then)!

I also knew place value was so important that we had to keep it on the agenda all through the Year 1/2 year. Short, sharp bursts of the same content over and over was critical and this is why I developed 'Target 1000'.

Just like it was in my classroom all those years ago, the basic premise of 'Target 1000' is to work together as a class to collect 1000 bottle tops.

Every day students would bring in bottle tops and we could count them.

As we counted, we grouped in units of 1 ten, and then when we reached 10 tens we renamed these as 1 hundred. 

Very soon my classroom was overflowing with bottle tops, so I enlisted the self-described 'solid-without-being-outstanding' sewing skills of my mum to create a more streamlined and visually appealing way to display our growing collection of bottle tops.

I explained what I had in mind to mum (who is also a teacher), we headed to Spotlight for the material, and 'viola', my idea came to life (well that's how it seemed to happen for me, there was a little more 'work' involved for mum!).

This is what the original (OG) Target 1000 'prototype' that I used in my classroom looked like:

I literally used the place value pockets every day (because the students begged me every day to see what number we were up to!). Our dedicated 'Target 1000' time became the last 5-10 minutes before the end of the school day and it became a great 'carrot' 🥕for a quick pack up. The old.... 'if everyone can have their tables and tubs clean, and their bags packed by the time I count to 20, we can do Target 1000' became my afternoon 'catch-cry'.

At the end of the day when the students were packed and ready, we would count and organise the bottle tops that had been sent in by families.

Unfortunately, I cannot find a photo of the Target 1000 in situ (back in the early 2000, photos weren't something we were regularly taking in the classroom- how times have changed!), but I do have this photo of me in the classroom (not sure what I was doing, or why is was taken, but if you look closely you can just see the pockets hanging underneath the blackboard!).

In Target 1000, there are ones pockets, tens pockets and hundreds pockets.

We would put the bottle tops in the 'ones', then when we filled 10 ones, we moved them into a 'tens' pocket. Then when 10 tens were full we put them in a 'hundreds' pocket.

Looking back, this was in many ways like a 'Daily Review' of place value- but without a PowerPoint slide in sight!!

I knew then, and definitely know now, that place value is too important just to teach for a few weeks at the start of the year. It requires constant reinforcement and retrieval.

In the quick 'Target 1000' session each day I would ask questions like:

What number do we have now? We would then show it on the flip chart (if I was doing it nowadays, I would also have everyone writing the numeral and then 'chinning it' on their mini-whiteboards- tick informal assessment opportunity).

I would say:

How many tens are there altogether?

How many hundreds are there?

How many more until we reach 1000?

What would ten more than this number be?

What would 1 hundred more be?

Note: When you purchase the Target 1000, I send you a guide with all the questions to ask!

'Target 1000' was great for several reasons:

1. The students saw a purpose for counting
2. The students were cumulatively counting a large collection and seeing the base ten grouping pattern on high repeat!
3. They were physically 'seeing' a growing collection and developing their understanding of magnitude (one year our collection reached over 4000 bottle-tops!)
4. They could physically see the tens pockets inside the hundreds pockets and the ones inside each of them (renaming is so abstract and this made it concrete).

By this point you may be wondering 'what do we do with the bottle tops at the end of the year?'

Back when I was in the classroom (when you start anything with 'back when I was...' it is a sure sign you are getting older!), there wasn't anything like the focus on sustainability that there is now. I remember collecting wine corks for the elephants at the zoo, but apart from getting an insight into the drinking habits of the parents, I am actually not sure if the corks ever made it to the elephants or what they used them for!

But recently I saw on 'Better Homes and Gardens' (another sign of my age!) an amazing young person called Lottie Dalziel who founded Banish, which is a website and marketplace designed to encourage Australians to live more eco-friendly lives.

Lottie runs the BRAD program (Banish Recycling and Diversion) where she tackles hard-to-recycle items, ensuring they’re properly processed instead of ending up in landfill.

You may be surprised to learn that just 9% of plastic gets recycled in Australia, and in many locations bottle tops cannot be recycled, so are simply added to landfill. 

So when you reach your target number of bottle tops, you can send them to Banish and they will recycle them into really cool items like pens and earrings to sell on their website!

You can find out more about Banish and the BRAD program here and if you are interested in giving the Target 1000 product a whirl in your classroom (I recommend it for Year 1/2 or Year 2 classrooms), you can see some beautiful professional product photos, and find out a little more at my Numeracy Teachers Academy Shop Website.

Ange🎓🎲

PS: A shoutout to all those teachers who remember writing on blackboards!! :)