One of the most fundamental mathematical concepts, yet one of the most poorly understood, is place value. The typical primary school lesson presents only a superficial, nominal understanding of place value. Students learn only to correctly name the place-value columns, or identify the digit in a given column, but they often do not understand the significance of the column names.
In Part 1, The Chocolate Factory, I introduced a middle school activity for rebuilding often weak base ten foundational concepts. The activity extends understanding to place value in other bases. In Part 2, I will introduce activities suitable for much younger children. Young children can construct the meaning of base ten place value through many activities and games.
There is some evidence from Jean Piaget's work as illustrated in the video (see Part 2 link), that base ten is conceptually out of reach for very young children. If there is demand, I will present some activities that help young children explore "Two Land" and "Three Land." Years ago I field tested a unit called "The Land of Hand" which of course would be "Five Land" in the terminology of the video.
Instead of posting this series to my blog or on dKos, I would like to send it out as emails. The html formatting requirements for the blog are daunting, and frankly, overwhelming. I mean, it can take me hours to produce a table with html, not to mention creating illustrations, and all of the other audio-visual aids that go beyond mere web links. If you would like to join the email list, please send me an email.
If you use the subscribe feature on the blog you will receive notice of postings to the blog, but you will not receive the email-based information. I do not know how to set up an email capture form with double opt-in. Therefore I am requesting that if you would like to join the email list, please send an email to the email address at the top of the blog.