Gattegno Tens Chart

The Gattegno Tens Chart is a logical and powerful way of teaching place value. Each row of numbers stretches from 1-9, with corresponding zeroes to support every place value from thousandths up to millions. With a tens chart, students can intuitively learn that every place value works in a similar way to the other.

Printable Gattegno Tens Chart

Some various activities:

Number Building: Experience saying names of numbers with different endings, tens and tenths, hundreds and hundredths, etc. Explore what happens when we add 1 (or other powers of 10, or other numbers entirely) to the end of a row. Practice making and deconstructing numbers of different sizes by finding their component parts.
Multiples: Explore similarities between numbers – e.g. four 2s is 8, four 20s is 80, four 200s is 800, four 0.2s is 0.8. Have students choose various numbers of their own interest and see where their multiples go.

The power of 10: Show students how 10 of any number makes the number below. Experiment with different numbers to confirm this works. Suggest that we can multiply and divide by powers of 10 by simply moving up or down a certain number of rows from any number. Have students choose a starting number and take it on a journey all over and back to where they started by multiplying or dividing by powers of 10. (e.g. from 63 to 6300 to 630,000 to 6.3 to 0.063 to 63)
From A to B: from one spot to another laterally and vertically (e.g. from 4 to 700: 4 ÷ 4 = 1, 1 x 100 = 100, 100 x 7 = 700)
Percents: Use the Tens Chart to easily find 10% and 1% of a given number. These can be added to find precise percents.
e.g. 12% of 230
10% = 23
1% = 2.3

12%

= 27.6

Adapted from ideas by Alf Coles and based on work by Caleb Gattegno