Year 1 walked the number track to 120; Year 2 opens the road to 1000. Nothing about the engine changes — ten ones still bundle into a ten, and now ten tens bundle into a new thing called a hundred. A three-digit number is not three strangers standing together: it is a structured quantity, so many hundreds, so many tens, so many ones. And the same number lives happily in four homes at once — blocks on a desk, words said aloud, digits on a page, and a position on a line. This unit visits all four.
The lamington stall
A fete order is in. Stack trays of 100, bags of 10 and singles to match it.
Stack trays of 100, bags of 10 and single lamingtons until the order is exact.
Build it before you read it
Materials come first because hands convince faster than symbols. A tray of one hundred is ten bags of ten — children can check, and should. When a child stacks three trays, five bags and four singles and reads the total as three hundred and fifty-four, the numeral stops being a code and starts being a description. Watch for the classic stumble: a child who wants to build 354 from thirty-five separate bags has counted correctly but missed the bundling. The stall enforces the discipline gently — at most nine of each kind, exactly as the digits allow.
The road-trip number line
Every number is a place on the road. Drive to the 870 km sign exactly.
The Sydney sign stands at 870 km. Plan the jumps that land on it exactly.
A number is a place on the road
The number line is the second great picture of number, and Australian children already read one every holiday: the distance signs on the highway. Sydney 870 means the same thing on a sign and on a line — a position, reached from zero by jumps. Eight jumps of one hundred and seven jumps of ten land exactly on it, which is skip-counting from Year 1 doing grown-up work. Position also quietly teaches order: whatever sits further down the road is the larger number, no column comparison required.
The kelpie muster
Three mobs of sheep, three counts. March them into order, smallest first.
Swap neighbouring mobs until they stand smallest to largest, left to right.
The front digit decides first
To order three-digit numbers, read like a judge: hundreds first, and only on a tie do the tens get a vote, then the ones. The mob of 95 looks busy but owns no hundreds digit at all, so it walks before 905 and 950 — and those two are separated only by their tens. Children who muster numbers this way stop being fooled by a large ones digit on a small number. Ordering is not a new skill; it is place value, read left to right.
Three ways to say it
One number, three costumes: blocks, words and digits.
Read the blocks, say the number aloud, then check yourself.
Four names, one number
Say it, build it, write it, place it — a number is owned only when a child can travel between all of its names. The words carry a local accent: in Australia we say three hundred and fifty-four, with the and. And the words hide a trap the digits refuse to hide: five hundred and six never mentions the tens, but the numeral must write 506, because without the zero holding the tens place the 5 and the 6 would collapse into fifty-six. That quiet zero gets a whole unit of its own next.
Between which hundreds?
Every number lives between two hundreds. Find its street on the line.
Where does 467 live on the line? Pick A, B or C.
Every number has neighbours
Ask of any number: which two hundreds is it between? 467 lives between 400 and 500, a little nearer 500; 138 has barely left 100. This neighbourhood sense is what later turns into rounding and estimation, but at Year 2 it is simply knowing the street a number lives on. It also makes large numbers friendly — 905 stops being big and scary and becomes just past 900, with the line there to make the claim visible.
Digit cards: front seat first
Same three digits, very different numbers. Position is the whole game.
Three digit cards, six possible seatings. Which makes the biggest number, and which the smallest?
Position is the whole game
Three digit cards, six possible numbers — and the difference between the largest and the smallest is nothing but seating. The biggest digit claims the hundreds seat to make the largest number; the smallest leads for the smallest, with one exception children love discovering: zero is not allowed to drive, so 205 is the best that 5, 0 and 2 can do. With numbers to 1000 read, built, ordered and placed, the rest of Year 2 Number opens up — renaming comes next, where 354 learns to be 35 tens and 4 ones, and the quiet zero finally gets its own story.
Quick self-check
1. Which numeral shows three hundred and seven?
2. Which of these numbers is the largest?
3. What is 10 more than 296?
4. On a 0 to 1000 number line, 730 sits between...
5. Using each of the digits 2, 6 and 4 once, the largest number you can make is...