Susan Carpenter's 1st and 2nd Grade Classroom : What We're Playing in Math

This week, we've been working on number sense, place value, and logic, as we play the Guess-Digit-Place game.

This game is great to play at home - or at a restaurant, say, when waiting patiently for food. Those paper placemats

can be very handy!

Here is a simple version, one that we started with in class:

Objective: Students will learn the concept that each digit has its own unique place within the whole

number.

Materials: chalkboard, chalk (or paper, pencil at home)

I said, "We're going to play a game called the Guess-Digit-Place game. It's a guessing game, and I will

write down my secret number on a piece of paper. You can make guesses and I give you clues on a

chart." I then drew a simple chart on the board that said GUESS/DIGIT/PLACE.

We started with a three-digit number. As children guessed numbers, I wrote their number under

"guess" and then wrote how many correct digits were in their guess, and how many were in the right

place. Then the students kept guessing numbers based on the previous responses, until we got the

right number. We are currently up to guessing numbers in the thousands place - it is getting super

tricky!

An example would be 125. If a student guessed 359, I would write 359 under guess, then

1 under digit (meaning that the digit 5 was guessed correctly), then 0 under place (meaning that it

was not in the correct place). If the next guess was 435, then I would make the notation as follows:

GUESS DIGIT PLACE
359 1 0
435 1 1

Susan Carpenter's 1st and 2nd Grade Classroom