Year 5 Calculating with decimal fractions worksheet

“Moving digits along” is free to print, with no account. It is the first sheet in the Year 5 maths unit “Calculating with decimal fractions”, for children aged 9 to 10, and takes about 20 minutes.

Print it on A4. The child's pages come first; the answers, and what each wrong answer tells you, are on the grown-up page that follows. Weeks 18 to 20 of the year, 15 sheets in the unit.

Free sample · answers on the last page

Moving digits along

Name: ____________ · Date: ____________
Year 5 · Maths · about 20 minutes
Answers are on the grown-up page

Today I can use place value moves to scale numbers ten, a hundred or a thousand times.

A Look back3 min

1.
3 tens and 4 ones make
2.
Sam has 8 bags with 5 sweets in each bag. How many sweets altogether?
3.
What is 10 more than 265?

B Watch me, then you4 min

Look at 35 × 100. Watch where each digit goes.

Watch me

35 is 3 tens and 5 ones.

Multiplying by 100 moves each digit two places left.

The 3 moves to the thousands and the 5 moves to the hundreds.

The empty columns get zeros, so 35 × 100 = 3,500.

Now you

1.
Multiply 42 by 100.

C Your turn6 min

Each row uses the digit 3. Watch how far it moves, and which way.

1.
3 × 10 =
2.
3 × 100 =
3.
3 × 1,000 =
4.
3 ÷ 10 =

Say it out loud: What happened to the digit 3 each time? How many places did it move?

D Spot the mistake3 min

Priya says: “6 × 100 = 60, because you just add one zero.”

1.
What is 6 × 100 really?

E Think deeper4 min

Answer the question, then tell your grown-up in one sentence why the answer is so big.

1.
Kit says 0.6 × 1,000 = 6. What should the answer be?

How did it feel?

I can do it Nearly Not yet

For the grown-up

Moving digits along · 2 minutes to read

Answers, and what a wrong one tells you

A

1. 34

2. 40

3. 275

B

1. 4,200

C

1. 30

2. 300 If your child writes 30, the digit moved only one place, as in ×10. Multiplying by 100 moves each digit two places left.

3. 3,000 If your child writes 300, the digit moved only two places. Multiplying by 1,000 moves it three places left.

4. 0.3 If your child writes 30, they moved the digit left. Dividing by 10 moves each digit one place right, so 3 ÷ 10 = 0.3.

D

1. 600 If your child writes 60, they added one zero, which is what happens for ×10 and not ×100. Each digit must move two places left, so the 6 lands in the hundreds and the answer is 600.

E

1. 600 If your child writes 6, the digits moved only one place, as in ×10. Three places left gives 600.

Words to use

Say“Where did the digits go, and how many places did they move?”

Instead of“Just add a zero.”

After the sheet

Write 4, 40, 400 and 4000 on four cards and lay them in a row. Point to the 4 on each card and count how many places it has moved left.

Tick what your child got right in StudyDen. Anything missed comes back in a later Look back box, so there's no need to redo the sheet.

The rest of this unit

14 more sheets come with a StudyDen plan, in teaching order:

Moving digits by 10, 100, 1,000(with a plan)
Moving digits, not zeros(with a plan)
Changing length units(with a plan)
Changing grams and litres(with a plan)
Tenths times whole numbers(with a plan)
Multiplying hundredths(with a plan)
Measures with decimals(with a plan)
Tenths and dividing by ten(with a plan)
One hundredth, two ways(with a plan)
Decimals times small numbers(with a plan)
Decimal fractions in columns(with a plan)
Bigger or smaller?(with a plan)
Scaling decimals to divide(with a plan)
Sharing decimal amounts(with a plan)

Every Year 5 maths worksheet

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