The Struggle is Real

Last year, one of the concepts that my third graders struggled with was rounding.  They could not grasp when to round up and when to round down.  One of the ways I helped them was to make a visual chart.  I printed, laminated, and attached it to their Everyday Math Journal.

For weeks, we went through the steps...underline the place value you are rounding, draw an arrow next door, what is the number the arrow is pointing to...you get the picture.  After a while of trying to come up with a way for my struggling students to grasp when to round up and round down, one of our lovely third grade students explained how he remembered when to round.  He explained to the other students that he imagined the number in the place value we were rounding had balloons attached to it.  To figure out how many balloons were attached he had to look next door.  If the number next door was four or less that would not be enough balloons to make the number float(up to the next number).  However, if it was five or more, that would be enough balloons to make the number float up off the ground to the next number.  It was genius!  Why didn't I think of that?  Almost all of my kiddos understood when we started using that analogy.

You can get my rounding guide in my TPT store for FREE!

Happy Tuesday!