Right on Target

You know, teaching has a way of keeping a person humble.  Near the beginning of the year, my third graders and I spent time learning how to round numbers to the nearest 10 and 100.  We did several hands on activities and practiced on several occasions.  These numbers were used to estimate sums and differences in the students' Everyday Math journals as well as other assignments.  I was pleased with everyone's progress (you know, feeling pretty confident) and thought we "had it."

Fast forward to the test covering our unit on addition and subtraction.  Suddenly I had 6 or 7 kids lined up asking for help how to round numbers and then add or subtract them.  Huh?!  I wanted to ask where these darlings had been for the last 3 weeks, but of course, I didn't (well, I might have asked it in my head).  Sigh.

So much for my quality teaching first time around.  I clearly missed the mark.  Let's try again, kids. In order to correct my missteps, I pulled out a rounding chart I've used for years to help kids who are struggling, but I made a few changes in hopes of getting the desired results.  I added some color and other aids to give kids even more clues about where to land with an answer when rounding to the nearest 10 and 100.

Here's a look at the rounding chart while I was working with a few students in a small group. This first picture shows the chart for rounding to the nearest 10.

Here you can see we were looking at the number 37.  We first identify the two tens 37 is located between--30 and 40.  Then using the marker, we can see that 37 is closer to 40 than it is to 30.  The arrows also help the students identify if the 10 should stay the same (red) or go up (green).  You could also laminate this page or put it in a plastic sleeve and have the kids write the actual number in the correct box.

The idea is mostly the same for rounding to the nearest 100.

In this case, we were looking to round the number 127 to the nearest 100.  Again, we look at which hundreds the number is between and then decide which one is closest.  This visual aid is very helpful in getting the kids to recognize their only two choices when rounding.

After spending a day working on just this rounding piece, we moved to playing a rounding bump game to put our skills into action.  Here's a look at a couple groups playing the game.  You'll notice both groups kept the rounding chart handy to make sure they were still getting it.

Grab the Right on Target Rounding Freebie here!!

So far, so good.  We have spent most of our time mastering rounding to the nearest 10.  Our next step will be to put that to use when estimating answers to addition and subtraction problems.  Then we will do the whole thing again with the charts and games to work on rounding to the nearest 100. My fingers are crossed, but I think we are headed in the right direction and are back on target.

You can get all these materials at my TpT store.  And (insert trumpet sounds here)...TpT is having a big sale on November 28 and 29.  Here's your code and link!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!