Week 4: Rounding to the Nearest Ten Thousand and Hundred Thousand!

Hello! Welcome to Week 4 of my blog entry.

This week, we began discussing rounding to the nearest ten thousand.

Rounding is very challenging concept for fourth grade students. This is because their knowledge of place value directly impacts their ability to round numbers correctly. 

I use the rounding poem to help aid my students:

Find your place, look RIGHT next door.

4 or less? Just ignore.

5 or more? Add 1 more!

Even then, students struggle with the first step, finding their place value! I tell them to underline the place value they are rounding to. In this case, it is the nearest ten thousand. Then, I tell them to draw an arrow right next door. They need to know that that is the hundreds place value. They understand 4 or less, just ignore and that 5 or more means to add 1 more, but I find they struggle with how to plot this information on a number line. 

So I invented the Round O'Meter which is an enlarged number line with a slider for students to use to help guide their thinking visually. This proved really helpful for the students because it forces them to visualize where the number is on a continuum by using the slider to do so. 

Looking forward to our next lesson!