Place Value and Rounding

National Curriculum (England): Key Stage 2 SATs · Year 6 · KS2 SATs (primary)

8 ready-made resources for teaching Place Value and Rounding, written for Year 6 Maths (KS2 SATs). Slides, worksheets, mark schemes, homework, an assessment and retrieval quizzes, all with SEN-friendly scaffolding built in as standard. Below is what the topic requires and where pupils usually go wrong, free to read whether or not you sign up.

Independently rechecked. These files were written to the specification from our own topic maps, then put through a separate recheck pass from the one that wrote them, which found and fixed real errors. A subject teacher has not signed them off individually, so give them your usual read before you teach from them.

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What is in this bundle

Assessment mark schemeWord, editable
End-of-topic assessmentWord, editable
HomeworkWord, editable
Retrieval-practice quizzesWord, editable
SlidesPowerPoint, editable
Starter & exit ticketWord, editable
WorksheetWord, editable
Worksheet mark schemeWord, editable

What pupils need to be able to do

Read, write, order, and compare whole numbers up to 10,000,000, and state the value represented by any digit in a number of that size.
Round any whole number to a specified degree of accuracy (e.g. to the nearest 10, 100, 1,000, or higher): note that Year 6 rounds to a stated place value, not to a number of significant figures (that's a later, secondary-school skill).
Use negative numbers in real-life contexts (such as temperature), and calculate the interval between two values when the interval crosses zero (e.g. the difference between -4°C and 3°C).
Solve number and practical problems that draw on all of the above, choosing which skill the problem actually needs.

Where pupils go wrong

Misreading the place value of a digit in a very large number (e.g. confusing the ten-thousands and hundred-thousands columns), especially when the number contains zeros as placeholders.
Rounding by looking only at the very next digit and forgetting what happens when that digit is itself close to rounding up or down a whole column (e.g. rounding 1,999,600 to the nearest 10,000 requires care with the cascading nines).
Calculating an interval across zero by subtracting the two values directly without accounting for the sign change (e.g. treating the gap between -4 and 3 as 3 - 4 = -1, instead of counting the full distance across zero, which is 7).
Assuming "round to the nearest whole number" and "round to a given number of decimal places" are the same instruction.

How it gets asked in the exam

Paper 1 (arithmetic) style: "Write the value of the digit 7 in 4,732,915", "Round 2,847,350 to the nearest 100,000".
Papers 2–3 (reasoning) style: "The temperature was -6°C at midnight and rose by 9°C by noon. What was the temperature at noon?", "Here are four numbers. Order them from smallest to largest, and explain how you know."

Key vocabulary

Digit, place value, million, round, degree of accuracy, negative number, interval.

Assumed prior knowledge (Year 5)

Reading, writing, ordering, and comparing numbers up to 1,000,000.
Rounding to a required degree of accuracy for numbers up to 1,000,000.
Interpreting negative numbers in context, and counting forwards and backwards through zero with positive and negative whole numbers: Year 5 already counts through zero; calculating the size of an interval across zero is what's new at Year 6.

How Speca scaffolds this topic

A place-value grid (with clearly labelled columns from millions down to units) that every number is placed into before any reading, writing, or rounding task, so column identification is always a visible, deliberate step.
For rounding, an explicit "underline the digit, look at its neighbour, decide up or down" routine applied consistently, with the cascading-nines case given its own dedicated worked example rather than left as an edge case.
A number line spanning both negative and positive values, used consistently for interval-across-zero questions, so the "count the total distance, not subtract the raw values" method is seen visually before it's calculated.

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