BIG NUMBERS!!! Everybody loves 'em.

Hi All,

Kids find big numbers fascinating and fun.

I've had more than a few students come up to me over the years and ask, "What's the biggest number?" My best response is to read them this book:

Can You Count to a Googol? by Robert E. Wells (Albert Whitman, 2000)

This is a great read aloud. Robert Wells progresses from 1 to 10 to 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 and on all the way to a Googol. His drawings tell the story in a clear, easy to follow, entertaining manner. As you read aloud have students get involved as follows:

1. Give each student a copy of this paper and a pencil.

2. As they listen to the story and see the pictures, have them record each new number as it appears in the book. You can do the same on a large chart or screen. Debrief the illustrations, noticing how Wells uses grouping of different objects (like monkeys, bananas, eagles, boats, etc.) to keep them organized and easy to count.

3. Help students notice how when we write large numbers, we group the digits in periods of three and then separate them by commas, so it is easier to read. Try writing and reading large numbers without the commas! It is very hard. Grouping really helps.

4. Are zeros important? Yes! Try leaving them out and see what happens.

5. The very last page of the book tell about the Googol and how it came to be named. It's a very interesting story.

Here's a couple of fun pages to send home for students to try out and think about. They can even make their own Googol.

There's no expectation that elementary kids know what a quadrillion is, right? It's just very interesting to explore bigger numbers without the burden of memorization. It allows us to actually think about what we are seeing and how the number system is organized. It helps us see the patterns and how it all really makes sense. Can't ask for more than that! :)

Here's are links to all the papers here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YT65b6S9xSxKAUILDtDlJmnmJIWe3DRJ/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10gObn0vbNdfheclFNsDZwJQKYAd-z8om/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rYWkCWMoO3pks17IUyaaojX13yvlTqpO/view?usp=sharing

Best,

Bob

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