Place value in Key Stage 2.

Moving in to Key Stage 2 is an exciting time for both child and parents. Hopefully, maths will continue along the same lines as it did in Key Stage 1, with teacher utilising similar apparatus and building on familiar concepts.

Most schools will look to revise and build on the concept of place value, which should be very familiar with your children now. They will incorporate 1000's into their repertoire and become more familiar counting, adding and subtracting numbers with 4 digit. Providing your child is already possesses a good depth of understand they will take this in their stride. However, children may have problems if they have knowledge gaps or insecurities in this area.

You can help here by looking back at the concept of place value and reinforcing this. A place value chart is a valuable tool and can easily incorporate thousands. Cards or counters with 1's, 10's, 100's and 1000's can be made to aid children understand the value of a number.

Here I have made a very simple place value cards and counter from an old game labelled with 1's, 10's, 100's and 1000's.

This represents the number 1111.

A simple but effective activity for a year 3 (or above) would be to evaluate the counter and work out the number, write it and say or write it in words.

It is also really important to remember that any KS2 child may find this tricky if they haven't done it before or lack the depth of understanding.

For instance here there are 2 thousands, 3 hundreds, 2 tens and 1 one making 2,321 written two thousand, three hundred and twenty one.

You can also give your child a number and get them to used the counters to show the number.