5 Ways to use a Hundreds Chart

A Hundreds Chart is a great resource for teaching all different aspects of Mathematics. An interactive Hundreds Board?… even better!

I am very fortunate to work with Sommer from Stay Classy Classrooms, a brand dedicated to hands-on learning resources and materials. Stay Classy Classrooms has a number of amazing acrylic resources available for purchases both individually and in specially made bundles for educators. I absolutely love my acrylic tens frames, handwriting boards, letters and numbers and was so excited to receive my Giant Hundreds Board in the mail.

Here are 5 quick and easy ways to use a physical hundreds board in the classroom.

Fill the Board

Fill the board is as simple as it sounds! The kiddies take turns in taking a counter out of the bag. They read the number and then work out where it goes on the Hundreds Board. The activities is a team work exercise rather than a competitive game and is a great way for students to practice reading two digit numbers and their understanding of counting and place value when it comes to placing the counter onto the board. To enable students with this activity who may not be ready to look at a blank hundreds board, you could write some numbers on the board to get them started so that they have a little bit of a guide as to where their counter may go.

Hunting the Hundreds

I found this activity on Pinterest from Jessica Travis Teaching (thank god for Pinterest right?!). This game involves a little bit of reading so may require adult help or be an activity that you use later in the year if you are working in a Foundation classroom. There are 4 different types of questions. Students take a card out of the bucket, read it and then complete the task. The aim is to clear the board of all of the number counters by working through each of the cards in the bucket.

There are four different types of questions in the download from Jessica Travis, all to do with greater/less than, more or less etc. You can get this freebie at Jessica’s website or by clicking here.

Place Value – 4 in a row

Place value four in a row is a simple game that can be played independently in small groups even by your kindergarteners/preps. You can use playing cards or a dice with your hundreds board. Starting with an empty board, one student rolls two 10 sided dice. They choose whether what number they are going to make out of their roll. For example, if I roll at 3 and a 7, I can choose to make my number 37 or 73. Once they have chosen the number that they are going to make, they find that number counter and place it on the board where it goes. The aim of the game is to get 4 of your coloured number counters in a row on the board.

This can be easily adapted for playing cards. Students simply have the cards in a pile and flip over two at the same time. They make their number the same way we did with the dice. The challenge here is that if you do not have ‘school friendly’ playing cards, then you will need to use picture cards to make numbers 1 and 0.

Race to 100

I am sure you have heard of Race to 100, but incase you haven’t here is how to play. You can use a 6 or a 10 sided dice depending on the skills you are wanting your students to practice. Early in their prep/kindergarten year, you can be simply just counting on and later down the track you can be adding numbers together. Player 1 rolls the dice, what ever number they roll, they add that many counters to the board. For example, if they roll a 5, they add number chips 1 – 5 onto the board in their colour. It is then Player 2’s turn, player two rolls the dice and adds that number of chips however they are starting at 6 i.e. they roll a 3, they will add numbers 6, 7 & 8. Players continue to take turns until one player makes it to 100.

There are many variations to play with this game. You could have the students have their own hundreds board and be adding to it each time (this will take longer for the game to be complete). Another idea is to use two dice and have students add the numbers together before placing the chips down. The way you play is completely up to you and dependent on your learning outcome for that lesson or unit of work.

Skip Counting

You can use the hundreds board to practice skip counting with your students. You can do this in a number of different ways.

• Start with all 100 counters on the board, if you are counting by 5s for example, you can either remove the other counters or turn them over so that the numbers can’t be seen
• Use two different coloured counters and change all of the multiples to the other colour so that students can visually see the counting pattern

Hundreds boards are great resource for teaching or practicing number sense, place value and counting patterns. In my kindergarten/prep classroom I have always use hundreds boards in a variety of ways however I was forever printing them out for the kids to use. My acrylic hundreds board was the perfect answer to this however you could also use a digital hundreds board on the iPad or screen sharing up to the TV or smart board.