Decimal Place Value and the Beverly Hillbillies

Today's lesson started by Mrs. Osten testing out her ability to compete on America's Got Talent.  I sang to the class.  I think overwhelmingly, they would all agree...I DO NOT have talent.  They did enjoy the song and they were all able to infer who/what the song was about.  Here is the tune and the words.


The Tune is to "The Hillbillies" theme song.  You can hear it here:
http://www.ajsmidi.com/allsongs_1/bevrlyh.html

Let me tell you a story bout a little bitty dot.
He got so bored that he thought he would rot.
So he put on his sneakers and his tiny head band,
And he ran, and he ran through number land.

He found a number that was lost and afraid. 
He bounced along the line till his day was made. 
He hopped left and right to the number’s delight. 
He hopped and he hopped till he was out of sight.

When he hops to the right he makes the number feel small. 
When he goes to the left it feels big and tall.
He’s a tiny little dot but has power in his hand...
as he runs and he runs through number land.


Can you guess who/what the song is about? You got it - DECIMAL!


Now, we defined a decimal number and how it is said. The decimal's name is "And". We went on to say that if you called the decimal by "Point" or "Dot" you were calling him a bad word. (Hopefully this will make the correct name stick!)

Next, we went on to identify how a decimal is identified within a place value chart. I explained to the students that math is always based on patterns. Using the foldable shown at the beginning of this post, I showed the students how the decimal is like the "opposite" of the "O" in the ones place, then how the TENTHS place is the opposite of the tens place and so on with the rest of decimal place values through the HUNDREDTHS or THOUSANDTHS.

Finally, we practice reading and writing various examples of decimal numbers. While reading and writing the numbers we discussed that we read the whole number (the numbers to the left of the decimal, just as we did in the past). Then we said, "and", when we saw the decimal. And finally, read the entire number that was to the right of the decimal followed by the name of the place value the last digit fell in.

You know there was so much more to our discussion of decimals and numbers today. but here is a great start to get your brain jump started.

I hope this post will help you!


Love,
Mrs. Osten