Place Value: Population

Tomorrow students will consider the population of the small town where they learn, the state's capital city, the state, the country, and the world.

Using numbers that pique students' interest help them to learn
math with greater depth, interest, and skill. 

Town Population: 13,294 (2014)
Capital City (Boston): 667,137 (2015)
State: Massachusetts: 6,794,422 (v2015)
Country: USA: 324,718,574 (Census Clock)
World: 7,346,044,7784 (Census Clock)

First, I'll hang up the maps of the US, town, Boston, and State around our white board.  Next, I'll simply list the numbers on the board like this:

324,718,574       6,794,422         13,294      667,137   7,346,044,7784

Then I'll say what do you notice about these numbers?

I'll listen carefully to their responses as their observations will inform me about their number knowledge.

After that I'll ask students to order the numbers. I'll mention that mathematicians typically put numbers in order to help their analysis and number work.

I'll then tell them that these numbers represent the population, number of people, that live in the town, capital city, state, country, and world. I'll ask them to guess which number belongs to which location.

Once we have that information we'll focus on the population of Boston.

I'll suggest that we can write that number in many ways, and we'll practice writing the number in the many ways shown below. After that I'll say that it's difficult to remember that number and that's why people often use estimates instead. A ballpark number is easier to remember. We'll round the number to its nearest 100,000.

We'll then round the numbers of the other locations to the nearest highest value the number represents. Finally students will have a chance to write the other numbers in many ways to practice.