aROUND and aROUND we go

We have been in school for just over 3 weeks now...so far, so good!  My reading group is going strong!  We completed a great social studies unit, and we've spent the past week in our first science unit investigating the world around us using our 5 senses!  My little detectives tried to determine ten different concealed objects using only their sense of touch, different scents using their sense of smell, and the objects creating different sounds in closed containers using only their sense of hearing.  We also observed for details using our sense of sight.  But I think their favorite by far was exploring their sense of taste!  Little secret - it was mine too!  Don't we all love a good snack?

Place value was a huge success!  Our first chapter in math was place value - ones through thousands - and all that it entails.  Well about 14 or 15 out of my 19 homeroom students earned an A on the chapter test!  The other three homerooms had good reports from their math classes as well!  Now that we have mastered place value we're moving on for a unit on rounding to the nearest ten and the nearest hundred.

We started out by coloring this hundred chart from "super teacher worksheets" that shows which numbers round up (we colored them blue) and which round down (we colored them yellow). The kids will keep this in their binders that they take home.  Then we colored a blank hundred chart to match.  We used the second chart to make a foldable.  We cut out the square chart, folded it in half, and cut it to the crease between the numbers that round down and those that round up to make a simple two tab book.  We glued this book to the bottom of a piece of construction paper and labeled each side with round up/down.  The kids then took a blank piece of paper and created another two tab book.  We labeled this one with "Rounding to the Nearest Ten" and "Rounding to the Nearest Hundred".  On the inside we wrote our rounding rules - "I look at the digit in the ones/tens place" (respectively) and "If it is 1, 2, 3, or 4 I round down.  If it is 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 I round up."

The foldable was a good interactive project to introduce the subject and I love the original hundreds chart we colored.  Both will be great reference tools for them as we go through this unit.  Most of the kids seem pretty confident with the basic rules of rounding.  The trouble starts when they don't have answer choices.  My kids are having a hard time figuring out which two numbers they should choose between for their answer.  In rounding a number like 26, for example, I might have a student say it will be either 20 or 60.  Another might say 20 or 10.  Of course there were those who got it right away and know that it is 20 or 30!    Super teacher worksheets has a couple of number line pages for rounding I plan to use, but I created my own for some extra practice for our kiddos too!  If any of you can use it, feel free to borrow!  You can download it from google docs here or from scribed (I'm trying it out since I can never seem to get google docs to embed right).

Rounding - Finding Your Choices

Everyone have a great Labor Day weekend!  Enjoy the extra day off...I know I will!

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