Place Value

My team and I have been reading the book Math Workstations by Debbie Diller.  There are quite a few excellent activities for teaching place value in her book.  On Friday we had a "Tens Tools" day (this idea came from my teammate, Kim).  I used different materials (straws and rubber bands, beans and cups, unifix cubes, centimeter rods...) to set up 7 stations around the room.  The children traveled in groups of threes.  Once the children were at a station, everyone in the room made the same number using their tens tools.  Each station also had three tens and ones place value mats.  After the children made the number, they had to tell their friends at the station  "I have____groups of tens and ____extra ones, which equals _______."  (This math language idea can be credited to Debbie Diller).  It really helped to have this sentence written on the card for the children to reference.  I buzzed around the room to listen in briefly at each group.  Then the children were instructed to clean up, stand up, and move to the next station.  The children really loved it and had the opportunity to use seven different types of tens tools to make numbers.