Rounding and Estimating - The Complete Series (5 lessons)

With lesson plans, slides, activity ideas, differentiated worksheets and much more, these Year 3 'Rounding and Estimation' lessons are a great way to familiarise your class with various aspects of the number system, as well as how to make estimates ranging from how many marbles there are in a pot to how long it would take to fly to the moon!

The first lesson in this series starts by looking at the rounding rule for rounding to the nearest 10 and then extends this to look at rounding to 100. Your class will also have the opportunity to use rounding to find approximate answers to addition questions as well as playing Rounding Bingo!

This lesson gives your class the chance to show off their number knowledge by giving as many facts as they can about a given number, from whether it is odd or even to the value of each digit. They will also use their understanding to order and compare numbers through a variety of fun activities.

Children will learn exactly what the word ‘estimate’ means in this lesson as they undertake a variety of activities to become more familiar with the concept of estimation. The slides show children set of objects very quickly to see how accurately they can estimate how many there are. The main activity then challenges pairs of children to an estimation game using cubes, counters and paperclips whilst the alternative activity challenges them to estimate the length of different lines based on finger widths!

Putting the skill of estimation into a practical context, this lesson show children a map of Europe with a scale and challenges them to estimate the distance as the crow flies from one city to another. They can then undertake a similar challenge during their independent learning by estimating the distance between British cities. Alternatively, there are some estimation challenges involving a variety of different measures the children can explore.

There are lots of fun challenges for your class to undertake during this final lesson as they use complete various activities, seeing how close their actual results are from their initial estimates. From timing how long it takes them to write the alphabet to seeing how many cubes they can hold in their hand at once, they are sure to be engaged in their estimations!