Rapping and Rounding

Wow! That’s all I can say. Wow! (Do you know what awesome children’s book that line is from?)

This week has been FULL, and I have had absolutely no time to bloggy blog. I really hope things will slow down soon (who am I kidding), and I will be able to blog more often.

Anywho…I started teaching my kiddos how to round today. We will be learning how to round to the nearest ten, hundred, and thousand in the coming week. To introduce rounding, I put my students in groups and gave each group a post-it with a number written on it and a sentence strip. I asked the kids to envision that the sentence strip was a number line, and they needed to place the number they were given on the number line and decide which two tens the number is in-between. They were then instructed to put their number on the ten it was closest to. This got them thinking about what rounding is.

After this group introduction activity, I showed this CUTE video:

My kiddos LOVED this video!!! It was a big hit with the entire third grade today!

After watching the video, we started learning how to round numbers. A few years ago, I found this great idea to introduce rounding using “bully” and “wimp” numbers. I teach my kiddos that 0,1,2,3, and 4 are wimps and 5,6,7,8, and 9 are bullies. We sing a rap to help remember the steps for rounding a number.

Here is a sheet I created for my students to keep in their binders:

Rounding Rules

*The Bully and Wimp idea is not my original idea. I saw it on a teacher created worksheet once. I have adapted it to fit my needs.
*I found the Rounding Rap here, but I changed some of the lyrics to work with my teaching strategy.

These strategies have really worked well for my kiddos the past few years. I hear them singing the rap all year, and it brings a big smile to my face! Do you have any fun ways to teach rounding?