Rounding to the Nearest 10 and/or 100 with "The Dot"

While studying place value in math this year, Mrs. Turgeon, our ed tech helper, and I decided that the children might benefit from making a human timeline. If we were a number moving along the number line, maybe we would be better able to round. This strategy really helped our classmates to see where our number was on a number line in relation to the nearest 10 or 100.

We used white boards to mark our intervals on our human number line. We counted in increments of one if we were rounding to the nearest 10 and increments of ten if we were rounding to the nearest 100. After numbering our white boards the student wearing "the dot" headband had to find their place in line. Based on what classmates saw we told the dot whether or not to round themselves down or up the number line. 

If you would like to continue practicing rounding with your students this year, a rhyme we have used to help us remember which way to round is "5 through 9, up the line; 4 or less, down OH YES!"