What does teaching place value focus on?

Teaching place value primarily focuses on the art of seeing tens, which is indicative of understanding how numbers are structured based on the position of each digit. In a positional numeral system, the value of a digit changes depending on its placement within a number. For example, in the number 453, the digit 4 represents four hundreds, the digit 5 represents five tens, and the digit 3 represents three ones.

Grasping this concept allows students to recognize that groups of ten create new values (e.g., ten ones make a ten, ten tens make a hundred) and is crucial for performing mathematical operations such as addition and subtraction effectively. The skill of recognizing these groupings is foundational in advancing mathematical understanding and developing number sense.

While other concepts like negative numbers, memorization of facts, and geometric shapes may be important in math education, they are not directly related to the foundational principle of place value, which specifically emphasizes the significance of tens and the overall numeric system structure. Teaching students to see these groupings helps them make sense of larger numbers and perform calculations with confidence.