Rounding and Estimation in Action!

Here are some pictures to show how my students became rounding experts (or are at least on their way).  As I said in a previous post we made number lines up to 100.  It took a while, but it was worth it!  I laminated these, I’m very lucky because our school has a laminator.  With our laminated number lines we were able to really discover what rounding was all about!
First a student underlines the number in question.
Next the student circles or marks in somewhat the 10s that the number is in-between.  (Which makes me realize that the very first thing we did was review counting by 10s).
Then students can either easily see which 10 is the closest and round to that number, or they can bunny hop and count to each ten. 

Bunny Hopping

Students discovered on their own that the 5 is in the middle and we learned to always round up – most students mastered this concept, some still need a “5 --->” written on their worksheet or number line.

When it came to estimating a sum most students easily adjusted to rounding the addends to find the estimated sum.  A few students struggled – they would mix up which addend they had already rounded because the didn’t put the first number in the first box – which was an easy fix.  HIGHLIGHTERS!  You’ll see below that for some students I highlighted the corresponding columns – this made a big difference!

Nearly all of my students no longer need a number line and can round in their head…which makes me one proud teacher!  Here is a picture of one of my students when I told her she was a Rock Star!  CHECK OUT THAT SMILE!  Honestly…there she has no number line buts  solving estimation word problems…it probably helps that she decided to sit at my desk – teacher brain waves and all! 

So there you have it our rounding and estimation activities in action!  I’ll have to keep sticking rounding questions in their morning work to make sure they retain this stuff – our curriculum never cycles back to anything! 
You can get the rounding, estimation, problem solving and exit slip worksheets for free on my brand new Teachers Pay Teachers page – it’s the only item (for now), so don’t worry it will be easy to find!  One super amazing lady already gave me feedback!
I’ll post more next week about two project my kids worked on this week, one related to Grumpy Cat and the other to compound words. 
Cheers!
Mrs. Castro

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