Education Technology


Putting Things in Place

Activity Overview

Students investigate the value of the digits in $8,205.50 and determine the number of thousands, hundreds, tens, ones and even the number of dimes and pennies. The concept is then extended to additional situations. They learn where to place a decimal when writing amounts of money and to perform addition and subtraction operations with money.

Before the Activity

  • See the attached PDF file for detailed instructions for this activity
  • Print pages 45 - 56 from the attached PDF file for your class
  • During the Activity

    Distribute the page to the class.

    Follow the activity procedures:
    Activity A:

  • Discuss the idea of a field trip and read the book to the class


  • Activity B:
  • Calculate and record the money collected and spent in the story with the help of a TI-10


  • Activity C:
  • Find out how many thousands, hundreds, tens, ones, dimes and pennies are in the amount stated in the story
  • Similarly find out the number of hundreds, tens, ones, dimes and pennies are in the amount of money collected in the cafeteria


  • Activity D:
  • Find the number of bills and coins needed for the PTA collection of $ 3,091.82
  • Observe that nine tens and no hundreds are needed


  • Activity E:
  • Pass out a set of number tiles, instruct students to construct, read numbers, identify the values of the digits by following oral directions
  • Use the table to show different combination of coins that can be used to make forty cents
  • After the Activity

  • Review student results:
  • As a class, discuss questions that appeared to be more challenging
  • Re-teach concepts as necessary