Description
What our Estimating with Decimals lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Estimating with Decimals teaches students how to estimate numbers that involve decimals. Students will learn the steps to follow. By the end of the lesson, they will easily be able to estimate decimals to any place value. This lesson is for students in 4th grade and 5th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. One optional addition to the lesson is to have your students write their own decimal rap to remember the rules of estimation. You could also have them make a video explaining the rules of estimation with real world examples. Finally, if you have students who struggle with the lesson, you can let them use a place value chart.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
ESTIMATING WITH DECIMALS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Estimating with Decimals
The Estimating with Decimals lesson plan includes two content pages. We estimate almost every day in real life. We might estimate the size of an object, the area of a room, or the amount of a bill at dinner. Learning how to estimate money, lengths, time, distance, and more will make your life easier.
To estimate, you may need to round. You use the same technique to round decimals as you use to round whole numbers. There are four basic steps to estimating decimals. First, find the place value that you want, also called the rounding digit. Second, look at the digit to the right of it. Third, if it is less than 5, keep the rounding digit and drop all the other digits to the right. Finally, if it is greater than or equal to 5, add one to the rounding digit and drop the other digits to the right.
The lesson includes a few example problems. First, let’s estimate the number 13.7462 to the nearest tenth. Here, 7 is the rounding number and 4 is to its right. 4 is less than 5, so we get rid of all the digits to the right. Our final estimate is 13.7.
To estimate the same number to the hundredths, 4 is the rounding number and 5 is to its right. 5 is equal to 5, so we add one and drop all the digits to the right. Our final estimate 13.75.
ESTIMATING WITH DECIMALS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Estimating with Decimals lesson plan includes four worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, a homework assignment, and a quiz. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
RACE TO ESTIMATE ACTIVITY
For the activity, students will get to “race” to estimate. You will assign students to groups of four or five kids depending on the size of your class. You will need to prep by having four or five “lanes” of decimals on the board or a large piece of paper. Each lane should have about five different decimals and the place value that the number needs to be rounded to. Make sure you mix up the numbers order or use different numbers for lanes that are next to each other so kids can’t copy each other.
Then have students line up in the order they want to “run” and tell them when to go. Students will run to the decimal they have to round up or down. Once they have the right answer, the next students can run to the next problem. The first team done with all the decimals wins the race.
ROUND THE NUMBERS PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet divides questions into three sections. The first section requires students to round decimals to the place value that is underlined. There are four questions here. For the second section, students will round numbers to the place value that is next to the number, such as tenths or thousandths. There are four questions here as well. The third section requires students to round one number to four different places.
ESTIMATING WITH DECIMALS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will round 10 numbers to the place value that is underlined. Then they will pick one problem from the list and explain the steps they used to get to that number.
QUIZ
This lesson also includes a quiz that you can use to test students’ understanding of the lesson material. For the quiz, students will first fill in the missing words in the poem on the worksheet using a word bank.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet, the homework assignment, and the quiz. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
