Place Value of Decimals

Objectives

To understand place value of decimals.

To be able to compare numbers containing decimals and to recognise which is the larger number.

Resources

Abacus 4 Textbook 2 | Squared paper | Rounding Decimal Number (MyMaths)

Today's Lesson

Main Activity

As a mental warm up, ask your student to describe some of the properties of some 3D shapes. For example, how many faces, edges and vertices do they have.

Turn to page 55 in Abacus 4 Textbook 2.

Look at the questions on the page together. Point out the whole numbers and the fractions of numbers.

It might be helpful to write the numbers in a place value chart to compare.

For example:


Ones	.	Tenths
5	.	2
4	.	9

You can now compare the digit of biggest value (in this case, the ones column). I know that 5 is bigger than 4, so 5.2 > 4.9

Ask your student to copy and place the correct symbol between the two numbers.

Remind your student that rounding to the nearest whole number does not necessarily mean rounding up. Any number with a tenths digit less than 5 should be rounded down, as that is the nearest whole number. Run through activities on Rounding Decimal Number (MyMaths). Ask your student to copy and complete the page, working independently if possible.

Extra Activities

You might like to try the homework activity on the My Portal section of MyMaths to practise this skill further.

MyMaths Homework - Rounding decimals

Citations

[1] app.mymaths.co.uk [2] app.mymaths.co.uk