Rounding, Gallery Walk, Interactive Math Journals

Hi Everyone!

This week we've been working on rounding in math.  It's been so much fun!  

.... Truly it has been fun!  

Last winter I pledged to change the way I taught math to my students. 

I wanted it to be fun, interactive hands-on, and enriched with problem solving.

SO... I was on a mission with each new unit in math to do this very thing while aligning it to the Common Core.

Here's what I came up with for rounding this past week, and my students have enjoyed it.  

The best part..... It seemed as if my whole class understands the concept of rounding.

No tears, no redos... Woohoo!!!

I searched the web for ideas on books to use to introduce my third graders to rounding.
 I found the book below:

It was a great introduction to rounding.  It's  perfect for grades 1-3.

I had my students use number lines and a hundred chart at first.  Many of my students could easily round numbers to the 10s or 100s after our first mini lesson.  BUT there were a handful that were  struggling.  I've used  the Jack and Jill idea, a song, and etc in the past with rounding.  I didn't this year.
I found this cute story to use when teaching rounding, and thought I'd give it a try.  Who doesn't love a good story?!
Here's the story below:

AND guess what... this story worked!  Those students who were struggling with rounding got it with this story.  As I walked around the room checking out their answers on their whiteboards, I could hear  many of them say " It's a harsh judge, so one more year.  The number goes up."

I have been implementing math workshop 2-3 days a week.
Here are a few of the rotations that my students were able to participate in to
help them practice this new skill.

Rounding Bingo.. I made a set of cards for rounding to the nearest 10 and one for rounding to the nearest 100.

Rounding Race....

I also used my Math It Up board as a rounding rotation.  I had different numbers posted and students
had to round each number on the board to the nearest 10.

Finally, after teaching my students about rounding numbers and then estimating to find a total I added this rotation.

One of our favorite activities was a Rounding Gallery Walk.  I've used a gallery walk before when teaching adjectives.  My students last year LOVED this!  So I made a Gallery Walk for rounding.  I
printed out some numbers in the 10's and 100s.  Each student received 2 gallery walk cards that had word problems in which they had to round the number to the nearest 10 or 100.

Before we began this activity, we talked about an art gallery and expected behavior in an art gallery.

Okay, I know it's been a long post but I had so much to share.  I have one more thing...
I am loving the idea of interactive math journals.  So I'm trying these this year with my 3rd graders.
My students created an entry in their interactive math journals for rounding.  It was our first one.
Here is an example of a student's work.

Students had to write the learning goal.  Then they had to write about what they learned about rounding.  It was so cute to see some of their entries about the criminal and the harsh judge or the nice judge.  Then I gave each student 6 pieces of construction paper ( I wish I had small sticky notes at the time.  They would have worked so much better.) Each student had to write 3 numbers in the tens and 3 in the hundreds on the top part of the construction paper.  Then they taped or glued the top edge onto their notebooks.  Underneath each construction paper the students had to write the number that it would be rounded to.

I hope to post this weekend about the journal entry we will be doing on Friday for the properties of addition along with the journal cover I created for their math journals.

All of the items mentioned above and more (66 pages), except for the Math It Up board), can be found in my Round It! packet on TPT.    If you want to find out more information about this unit simply click on any of the pictures below to be taken to my TPT listing for this unit.

Have a fabulous rest of the week!