The History of Zero: Exploring Our Place-Value Number System by Tika Downey

The History of Zero: Exploring our Place Value Number System by Tika Downey takes students on a historical journey through the story of zero and the development of our number system. Perfect for middle to upper primary classrooms, this beautifully illustrated book introduces place value, patterns, and historical numerals and covers the evolution of the number zero and its significance in our number system.

The book explores how zero developed, including exploring the Roman and Egyptian number systems and our current base ten Hindu-Arabic system. This book presents the information in simple, student-friendly language and reading and reflecting on this text would be a great way to integrate literacy and numeracy.

This book is one of my favorites when I am teaching place value, particularly in Year 4-6. I love helping students to develop their historical knowledge of mathematics alongside their conceptual knowledge of place value. 

Please note the price of this book reflects its scarcity! It is very difficult to source!

Classroom ideas:

What is Place Value?  invite students to investigate the Roman and Egyptian Number systems and compare these with our current Hindu Arabic system. 

Students may use a table to compare the three systems.

Discuss the different systems and examples of where they have seen any of these systems being used- for example, Roman Numerals are used on some clocks.

Example and Non-Example: Students to reflect on why the Roman Numeral system is a not a place value system, while our Hindu-Arabic system is a place value system.

Information:

• Ages: 7 - 12
• Format: Paperback
• Dimensions: approx. 18 x 22 cm