Grade Levels: 3-5

*Click to open and customize your own copy of the Rounding Lesson Plan

This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Rounding, and supports the standard of using place value understanding to round whole numbers. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Display a receipt, or this image from the movie (timestamp: 2:25):

Ask:

  • What might be challenging about adding prices at a store?
  • What strategies could you use to help you estimate the total cost?  

Step 2: BUILD KNOWLEDGE

  • Read the description on the Rounding topic page.
  • Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 
  • Assign Related Reading. Have students read one of the following articles: “Quirky Stuff” or “In-Depth” Partner them with someone who read a different article to share what they learned with each other.

Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS 

Assign Rounding Quiz, prompting students to apply essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Step 4: DEEPEN and EXTEND

Students express what they learned about rounding while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs.

  • Make-a-Movie: Produce a tutorial explaining how to round 258 to the nearest one, ten, and hundred. 
  • Make-a-Map: Create a concept map identifying possible numbers that could be rounded to 160. 
  • Creative Coding: Code math problem involving rounding. Challenge a classmate to solve. 

More to Explore 

Sortify: Rounding: ​​Challenge players to sort numbers based on how they could be rounded in this learning game.  

Teacher Support Resources:

Lesson Plan Common Core State Standards Alignments