Are you looking for a fun method for teaching students to add, subtract, and multiply decimals? Wish you had fun lessons with a holiday theme? These are some of my students’ favorite lessons for practicing decimal operations. Because it’s so important for students to line up their decimals correctly, this lesson gives students practice in placing their digits in the correct location. My students love number chips! It’s fun to move the colorful number circles around their screen!
Decimal Addition and Subtraction
When students learned to add and subtract whole numbers, they were taught to line up their numbers in the one’s place, ten’s place, etc. Then they add or subtract from right to left. Adding and Subtracting Decimals is very much like that, except students will now line up their digits around a decimal point. They are still lining up by place value, but are now making sure the decimal points are lined up first. With Decimal addition and subtraction, there may be blank spaces that need to be filled with zeroes.
Using Number Chips makes this process so much more fun! Students move colorful chips around their digital screen and place them in the correct location around a decimal point. Every digit they need is available on every slide. This helps struggling students by giving them exactly what they need. They will then add or subtract and find the sum or difference using the numbers that are remaining. If they have numbers left that do not work in their addition and subtraction, they know they must go back and try again. Students get a real sense of satisfaction knowing they have placed each number correctly.
To add to the fun, the final slide has a riddle for the students to solve. The solutions to each slide are placed in a sequence that solves the riddle. Students match the solution with a letter placed inside a heart shape on that slide. They type in the letter above the correct solution and it spells out the answer to the riddle.
These Number Chip lessons are available in different themes with different problems to solve. Enjoy Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, Super Bowl, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter themed lessons. Each lesson has a specific riddle to match its theme.
Decimal Multiplication
When multiplying decimals, students move the decimal points to the right to create a whole number. By this point in their studies, students already know how to multiply multi-digit whole numbers, so they can just multiply to get a whole number answer. Students must note how many places they moved their decimals to the right, so they can move them back the same number of places when they find their solution.
The Number Chips lesson has students first count and record how many places to the right they moved their decimal points in each row. Then they record the total number of places the decimal points were moved. The colorful number chips are moved on the slide to solve the multi-step multiplication. Again, the exact numbers the students need are available on each slide. This gives students instant feedback to determine whether their multiplication is correct. If the numbers don’t work out, they must go back and look again. And just like the Number Chip addition and subtraction, students get a sense of satisfaction knowing their numbers worked out correctly.
The Decimal multiplication with number chips lessons are also available in the following themes: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Valentine’s Day, Super Bowl, St. Patrick’s Day and Easter. And just like the addition and subtractions problems, the lessons have a riddle to solve that matches the theme.
So much fun for the students!
Click here for all of the Number Chip Lessons: NUMBER CHIP LESSONS