100 Days, 10 groups of 10 Cupcakes

We've reached the milestone of 100 days at school. This is no small feat: time to celebrate!

Actually, we've been counting up to our first 100 days at school since the beginning of this school year. We track it each morning on our giant 100 square.

According to our revised Maths curriculum, children are expected to be familiar with numbers 0 to 20 in the first six months at school. After a year at school, they should be familiar with numbers to 100. In practice, this means being able to count and sequence (put in order) forwards and backwards, and also have an understanding of the beginnings of place value. Place value is the value of the digits in a number, according to where they are placed. So, the 1 in teen numbers means 'a group of 10'. The 1 in 100 means 'a group of 100'. We also encourage our students to see that the 10 in 100 means 'ten groups of 10'.

Since one hundred is such a big number to grasp, breaking it down into groups of 10 makes a lot of sense: 10 is a number we're familiar with.

 The tens frames that run alongside our 100 square show how each row of the tens frame make a group of ten: each decade (10, 20, 30, 40 etc.) is a ten. Two digit numbers are comprised of a number of tens and some ones (42 is 4 tens and 2 ones).

We've been practising making groups of 100 things, but arranged in groups of 10.

We have also applied the same thinking to our baking to celebrate 100 days at school. We aimed to bake 10 groups of 10 cupcakes.

After baking and decorating, our yummy cupcakes are ready to eat. We will arrange them in array of 10 groups of 10 before the party. The different coloured icing will help us to see the groups.

Then, we will experiment with how many we have when we eat one, then another and then another...