Developed in partnership with Education Services Australia

The Australian Curriculum sets the goal for what all students should learn as they progress through their school life. Skills in the Year 3-4 curriculum include:

• counting forwards and backwards by tens, hundreds or thousands
• reading four- and five-digit numbers and writing them in numerals or words
• making the largest and smallest number from four or five given digits
• arranging four- and five-digit numbers from smallest to largest, or largest to smallest
• using place value to break numbers into parts (for example, 24 563 is 20 000 + 4000 + 500 + 60 + 3).

It’s easy to help your child practise these skills as part of everyday life – just use these simple ideas.

Step up the place value challenge

Your child has probably mastered place value in three-digit numbers, and is now moving on to four- and five-digit numbers. Keep giving them lots of practice with ideas such as these:

• practise counting by thousands and ten thousands
• find four-digit and five-digit numbers and break them down – eg 18 361 = 10 000 + 8000 + 300 + 60 + 1
• find sets of four- and five-digit numbers and put them in order from smallest to largest
• play the Biggest Deal Challenge:
  start with a set of cards with the digits 0-9
  deal each person four cards
  each player arranges their cards to make the biggest four-digit number they can
  the biggest number wins!
  (If you like, you can let each player swap one card before comparing numbers.)
  To increase the challenge, deal five cards and create five-digit numbers.

Go online

For online reinforcement, Wishball: Whole numbers will give your child practice at:

• understanding place value (thousands, hundreds, tens and ones)
• doing simple addition and subtraction.

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