Show the four cards 3, 7, 0, 5 on the IWB as pupils settle. Take three hands-up answers, not open call-outs. Give five seconds of quiet think-time before any hands go up. Don't confirm an answer yet — the reasoning is unpacked in the next step.

7,530 the biggest: largest card in the highest-value column, 7 in thousands, then 5, 3, 0. Ask why not the 7 in units.

3,057 the smallest: make-or-break idea. Ask could we put the 0 in front, let them reason a leading zero drops it to three digits. So 3 leads, then 0, 5, 7 in units.

Rounding 3,057 to the nearest 100: point at the tens digit, 5, as the decider, so it rounds up to 3,100.

This round is for talking it through together — pupils take turns at the board and the class agrees or corrects out loud.

Load the cards 1, 9, 4, 6. Ask a pupil to place the 9 first and explain why. Rearrange the cards live on the mat to show the smallest number, and let the class say where each card should land before a pupil moves it. Watch for pupils reversing the order — check that biggest starts with the largest card and smallest starts with the smallest non-zero card. There is no leading-zero trap in this set, so it is a clean warm-up before the challenge.

These are the practice questions — pupils take turns at the board, check each answer, and the class confirms before moving on. Keep the board work brisk rather than over-explaining.

Run the four targets in order on the mat. For (c) the number must start with a 4, and asking for the smallest pins one answer: 4,268 (if a pupil builds another valid arrangement like 4,628, praise the reasoning aloud, then ask for the smallest). For (d) rounding to the nearest 100 uses the tens digit: 8,624 has a tens digit of 2, which is less than 5, so it rounds down to 8,600 (8,642 also rounds to 8,600 — the "2 in the tens place" condition is what pins 8,624). Ask pupils to justify each arrangement aloud before pressing Check.