What is in a Name?
Numbers are all around us — on buses, houses, calendars, and price tags. In this chapter we learn to read, write, and recognise numbers up to 1000, and we see how numbers are part of everyday life, including in our own names and the names of things around us.
- Place Value
- Every number is made of digits. The position of a digit tells us its value.
- Ones place: the rightmost digit
- Tens place: the middle digit (in a 2-digit number)
- Hundreds place: the leftmost digit (in a 3-digit number)
For 347: 3 is in the hundreds place (= 300), 4 is in the tens place (= 40), 7 is in the ones place (= 7).
So 347 = 300 + 40 + 7. This is called the expanded form.
- Reading and Writing Numbers
- 56 is read as "fifty-six"
- 108 is read as "one hundred and eight"
- 999 is read as "nine hundred and ninety-nine"
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Write 234 in words.
Step 1: 2 is in hundreds place → two hundred
Step 2: 3 is in tens place → thirty
Step 3: 4 is in ones place → four
Answer: Two hundred and thirty-four
What is the place value of 6 in 369?
6 is in the tens place, so its place value is 6 × 10 = 60.
Write the expanded form of 507.
507 = 500 + 0 + 7 = 500 + 7
Which number comes just after 199?
Count on by 1: 199, 200.
Arrange in order from smallest to greatest: 312, 87, 450, 209.
Compare hundreds first: 87 has no hundreds, then 209, 312, 450.
Answer: 87, 209, 312, 450
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- Key Ideas
- Expanded form breaks a number into hundreds + tens + ones.
- The digit 0 is a placeholder — it holds a place but adds no value.
- Numbers can be compared by looking at the hundreds digit first, then tens, then ones.
Common mistakes
- Students often write 105 as "one hundred five" — remember to say "and": one hundred and five.
- Do not skip the zero in the tens place when writing expanded form (507 = 500 + 7, not 500 + 07).
Summary
Numbers up to 999 have three places — hundreds, tens, ones. Knowing the place value of each digit helps us read, write, compare, and order numbers correctly.