Place Value to 100: Reading and Writing

Free sample questions, a clear explanation, and 5 practice skills with an AI tutor that guides without giving the answer away.

The Superpower of Place Value! 🦸‍♀️

Hey Math Explorer! Have you ever played with building blocks, like LEGOs? Imagine you have single blocks and you also have cool towers made of exactly 10 blocks already stuck together. Numbers are a lot like that!

In the world of numbers, the single blocks are our "Ones" and the tall 10-block towers are our "Tens." This simple idea helps us build and understand even BIG numbers, all the way to 100!

Let's Build the Number 47!

To build the number 47, we don't need 47 single blocks. That would take forever to count! Instead, we can use our Tens and Ones superpowers:

We grab 4 of the "Ten" towers. (That's 10, 20, 30, 40!)
We grab 7 of the single "One" blocks. (That's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7!)

When we put them together, we have 4 Tens and 7 Ones. We write it as 47!

This is called Expanded Form:

47 = 40 + 7

⭐ Key Takeaway! ⭐

A digit's place tells you its value! The position is everything. Look at the number 52.

The digit 5 is in the Tens place, so its value is not just 5... it's 50!
The digit 2 is in the Ones place, so its value is 2.

If we swap them to make 25, the 2 is now in the Tens place (worth 20) and the 5 is in the Ones place (worth 5). The same digits make a totally different number!

You are doing an amazing job learning how numbers are built. Every time you see a two-digit number, think about the towers of ten and the single blocks. You're a place value pro in the making!

Sample questions

1. What is the number 25 in words?

○ fifty-two

○ twenty

○ five

✓ twenty-five

Answer: twenty-five — Think about how many tens and how many ones are in 25.

2. Which number shows "thirty-four"?

✓ 34

○ 43

○ 304

○ 340

Answer: 34 — "Thirty" tells you the tens digit, and "four" tells you the ones digit.

3. How do you write the number 17 in words?

○ seventy-one

✓ seventeen

○ seven

○ seventy

Answer: seventeen — Numbers from 13 to 19 often end with the sound 'teen'.

Skills in this topic

Read and write numerals up to 100.
Represent numbers up to 100 using base-ten blocks and place value charts.
Write numbers up to 100 in expanded form (e.g., 47 = 40 + 7).
Identify the value of each digit in a two-digit number (e.g., in 52, the 5 means 50).
Describe how the position of a digit changes its value in a two-digit number, using examples.

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