Primary Four: Writing Numerals into Words (Up to 100 000)

Primary Four Syllabus dictate that students need to write and read numbers in numerals and in words. In this entry, we will discuss how to help students write the numbers into words.

This process builds on the assumption that students have a strong foundation in writing any numbers up to 999 into words. And with this process helps students pave the way to writing numerals into words for numbers that are less than 10 Million, as required by the Primary Five Syllabus.

1) Ask the students to bundle the digits, with every three digits bundled into one unit, starting from the back.

For instance, if the digit given is 37890, ask them to bundle it into this way 890 as the first bundle follow by the second bundle which is 37. To help the student visualise it, maybe you can ask them to circle the bundles out in the numerals or put a slash. Example is 37 / 890.

2) Next ask the student to write in words for the bundle on the most left. So in this case would be 37. Once the students has written into words for the bundle, you can tell the student that the second bundle from the right is always for the thousands, as such, asking him to put in then word "thousands" right after he has written into words for the second bundle.

So in this case after the student have written "Thirty-seven" ask him/her to write down thousands after it, forming the words "Thirty-seven thousands".

3) After that write in words for the next bundle which is "890".

4) Put all those words that the students have written in the order of the bundle of digits and the students should get the correct answer.

5) To double check whether the answers are correct, ask students to cover the numerals and convert what he has written in words into numerals. After the conversion, students need to check with what they have written is similar to the question. This form of checking would also strengthen students ability to write words into numerals.

Some of the common mistakes arise when they are zeroes in the numerals so parents are remind to ask students to take care of these zeroes when writing into words.

Another common mistakes would be spelling, so parents do encourage your children to check the spelling as well.