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Number and Place Value

Resources to help with reading numbers in the millions, rounding and negative numbers.

Our place value pages for Year 5 will really show whether a child has understood how numbers work and in particular, that the value of a digit depends on its place in the number. This understanding is absolutely essential for making further progress.

The most significant feature of work in Year 5 is that children are expected to use large numbers, reading and writing numbers to at least a million. Many children will find it difficult to read them out in words. Just remember to work in sets of three (hundreds, tens and ones for each set) when reading a large number. Commas or spaces help a great deal with this; eg 2,345,678

There is an emphasis on using large numbers in both Years 5 and 6. For example, a target for Year 5 Number is:

round any number up to 1,000,000 to the nearest 10, 100, 1000, 10 000 and 100 000

Now this might sound fairly straightforward but for many children it will pose considerable difficulty. By Year 5, children should already be able to round to the nearest 10, 100 and probably 1 000, but dealing with very large numbers can cause confusion.

When rounding to the nearest 10 000 the key figure is the thousands digit. If the thousands digit is 5 or above, round up. If it is below 5, round down.

e.g. 327,550 is 330,000 to the nearest 10,000.

324,259 is 320 000 to the nearest 10,000

(Note that when rounding to the nearest 10,000 it does not matter what the hundreds, tens or ones digits are, it is the thousands digit which must be looked at.)

When rounding to the nearest 100,000 the key figure is the ten thousands digit. If the ten thousands digit is 5 or above, round up. If it is below 5, round down.

e.g. 277,550 is 300,000 to the nearest 100,000.

237,259 is 200,000 to the nearest 100,000

Read, write and compare numbers

Practice pages for reading, writing and comparing numbers up to one million.

Place value

Determine the value of each digit in numbers up to one million.

Rounding numbers

Round any number up to millions, to the nearest 10, 100, 1000, 10 000 and 100 000. Estimating and approximating.

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