Estimation

Well, we jumped right into math on our first day of school!  I began class, by asking the kids to complete an "entrance ticket".  This is a single math question that will allow me to quickly assess their understanding of a specific math concept.  Today our entrance ticket asked the student to subtract across zeros. 

I then introduced today's concept (estimation) by reading them a story called Counting on Frank by Rod Clement.  We discussed that the boy in the book estimated everything around him....it pays off when he wins a trip to Hawaii! 

I explained that WE WILL be estimating to determine solutions to problems.  Before we could begin, we needed to define what estimation was.  So began our first venture into a math journal.  We created a Table of Contents and then created our first Estimation Word Web.  We will be adding to the web each day as we work with a new concept.  Today we focused on the definition of estimation (an educated guess of an actual value) and when to estimate.  In our 5th grade made world, we estimate when we see words like:  about, approximately, around, close, etc.

This led into our estimation stations.  I found these stations in the book Math Homework that Counts: Grades 4-6 by Annette Raphel.  The stations the students investigated were:

1. Estimate how many cubes will balance the dice.
2. Estimate how many blocks will cover the bottom of the box.
3. Estimate the length of the licorice.
4. Estimate how many white cards are in the stack.
5. Estimate the number of tiles it would take to fill this shape.
6. Estimate how tall Mr. Stadel is.  (This comes from the site Estimation180).

I reminded the classes that the purpose is to ESTIMATE, not to find the actual answer to a given problem.  The kids rotated through each station determining their answers (we will share tomorrow).  This is Mrs. Dittrich's homeroom working through the stations:

To finish the class, we focused on the Estimation 180 problem.  I not only wanted the classes to see how to appropriately answer this problem, they will need the answer from today to estimate the problem tomorrow.  The kids were THRILLED to see how close their estimates were!  They really did an outstanding job today!

Welcome back!!