Make a collection

Making a collection of a million things is a very interesting procedure. Sometimes you see reports of classes collecting 1 000 000 tags from packages of bread. Collecting a million pennies would raise $10 000 for your program. In any case, making a collection of a million things usually involves publicity, since the wider community is needed to help make the collection, which means that students can talk about the process of showing what a million is; they are involved in making a system for storing, sorting, and displaying the pieces they are collecting; it takes time, so the immensity of the number has time to set in, and it provides a repetition of noticing smaller amounts-10 tens make 100 and 10 hundreds make 1000 many, many times during the process of collecting a million of anything.

There is lots of room for ratio and proportion in this project: if 100 items weigh five grams, how much will 1 000 weigh? 10 000? 100 000? If it takes three minutes to count 100 pennies and put them in the plastic case, how long will it take to deal with 1 000 pennies? How long will it take to wrap the million pennies?

Manipulatives to teach fractions

Student activities using fraction manipulatives start on page 72.

Commercial manipulatives
A person sitting at a table with examples of commercical manipulatives on it.
More examples of commercial manipulatives.

Some examples are shown above. See page 26 for sources of commercial manipulatives.