Lesson 4

Big Base-Ten Pieces

Est. Class Sessions: 3

Before the Lesson

Organizing Student Groups. Decide how you are going to organize your class to complete the three parts of this lesson. In Part 1, students work in groups to represent large numbers using various tools. See the TIMS Tip. Part 2 is a teacher-led activity in which the class builds a set of big base-ten pieces. You may find this activity more engaging and manageable with a smaller group of students. You may choose other parts of the lesson for students to complete independently while you work with small groups of students to build the big base-ten pieces. Students can complete most of Part 1 independently or in pairs. In Part 3, students use the Big Base-Ten Pieces pages in the Student Guide to become more familiar with the Place Value Chart II and use exponents to represent powers of ten. When students are comfortable with the chart, they play a game called Draw, Place, and Read in the Student Activity Book.

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If you have a large class, you may want to create more groups. The idea is to have a few examples to compare to each other as well as a group of students to support one another with finding partitions. Too many groups will make the class discussion too long. Too few groups will make the working groups too large and fewer students will be engaged.

Student Guide:
Student Activity Book:
Master: