Videos:

• What is a Base?

• The Base Ten System

• Exploring Other Bases

• Why Learn Other Bases?

• Teaching Place Value Building Numbers

• Flexible Thinking in Place Value

• Place Value Vocabulary and Beyond

Place Value is a system for organizing numbers based on the value of a digit’s position. In base 10, each place is worth 10 times as much as the place to its right, so the same digit can represent very different values depending on where it appears. Place value is not just about memorizing names for places, but about understanding how quantities are grouped and regrouped within a system.

There are other bases that can be explored as well. in base 2, places represent groups of 1s, 2s, 4s, and 8s, while in base 5 they represent groups of 1s, 5s, 25s, and so on.Exploring other bases deepens understanding of our usual number system and strengthens students’ ability to think flexibly about how numbers are represented.