Something your kids have seen a lot of lately is rounding. We spent over a week on it in class and are now using it to help us add and subtract. It is also in your weekly math homework review. This is a skill that will gradually get tougher throughout their elementary years. They must first know place value and have number sense to be able to master this skill. Students will use rounding to estimate sums, differences, products and quotients. This is a skill only to be used when a questions asks for "estimations" or asks for "about how much",
When we ask the kids to round a number it is because the questions does not require an exact answer. The picture below shows the steps that we ask the students to follow when rounding.
When we ask the kids to round a number it is because the questions does not require an exact answer. The picture below shows the steps that we ask the students to follow when rounding.
They must first circle the place value they are rounding to. The number may be in the thousands but if the problem wants you to round to the nearest ten then that is the place they will circle. Once they have circled the correct place value then they will underline the number directly to the right. The circled number and the underlined number are now the only two numbers they will look at at this point.
Once they have looked at the underlined number they will then decide if it is a weak number or a strong number. A weak number is digits 0-4 and a strong number is 5-9. If the underlined number is weak you will round down by dropping the circled number and not changing it. If it is a strong number you will then add one to the circled number and round up.
All numbers to the left of the circled number stay the same and all numbers to the right will become zeros.
Below is a real questions from our textbook that Levi will solve for you. Notice that the question does not ask the students to round to a certain place. They must use the answer choices to determine that on their own. He then uses the steps we just talked about to solve the equation and find the answer that best fits.
Levi's underlined number required him to round up and add one to the circled number but the below video is an example of what it looks like to round down. Hudsen will notice that the underlined number is a weak number so he will drop the circled seven and make all the numbers to the right after the circle a zero.
If your child is more of a visual learner you can show them this chart and have them plot out the two tens that their number is in between and then eyeball which ten is closer.
We have currently taken rounding a step further and added rounding with addition. Next will be rounding with subtraction. Some great practice questions you can ask your student to reinforce this concept at home would be...
" There are 26 kids in the library and
41 kids in the cafeteria. About how many
kids are in the library and the cafeteria?"
Questions like this help the students get use to seeing the word "about" and understand that this is an estimation (or rounding) problem. Hope this has helped. Once again, please let me know if this was helpful... confusing... too much.. I'm doing all of this for you guys so feedback is always welcome. Thanks!!
" There are 26 kids in the library and
41 kids in the cafeteria. About how many
kids are in the library and the cafeteria?"
Questions like this help the students get use to seeing the word "about" and understand that this is an estimation (or rounding) problem. Hope this has helped. Once again, please let me know if this was helpful... confusing... too much.. I'm doing all of this for you guys so feedback is always welcome. Thanks!!