Number Structure (Tens and Ones)

This is Farmer Tom. He is taking us on a tour of his farm. Look at that scarecrow! Scarecrows are placed in fields to scare birds away from eating seeds and plants. What’s that, Farmer Tom? You have more than one scarecrow?

Oh, wow! You have so many scarecrows! Let’s look at these scarecrows a little closer while Farmer Tom continues to harvest his fields.

Here is the first hill of scarecrows. There are 14 scarecrows on this hill. We can place 14 in a place value chart like this, but what does this chart really mean?

Let’s use place value blocks to help us understand. Here are 14 blocks. I wonder if we can combine these blocks to make them easier to count. Wow! We can combine the blocks to make 1 ten and 4 ones, just like the place value chart!

Now we can see more of Farmer Tom’s field. There are 26 scarecrows. When we enter this number in the place value chart, we can see that there are 2 tens and 6 ones. Can you try building the number 26 with place value blocks?

Start with the tens first. How many tens do you need?

Very good! You need two tens. How many ones do you need?

Correct! You need 6 ones. The number 26 uses 2 tens and 6 ones.

We can almost see all of Farmer Tom’s fields now. There are even more scarecrows on these hills.

These place value blocks represent the number of scarecrows we can see on Farmer Tom’s fields right now. We know the long pieces are worth 10 and the small pieces are worth 1. Let’s count them together! Ten, twenty, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five.

Correct! There are 3 tens and 5 ones. You are very good at this!

This is Farmer Tom’s entire field. Look at all of those scarecrows!

These place value blocks represent all of Farmer Tom’s scarecrows. How many tens do you see? Correct, 4. How many ones do you see? Very good, 8. Now let’s count the place value blocks together. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight.

Thank you for using place value blocks to represent numbers today. Now we know that Farmer Tom has 48 scarecrows!

Great job!