Estimation

Classroom Activities

This is going to be an ongoing unit and I would like to share it with the rest of the school, so I am going to use one of the bulletin boards in the common area to display facts that my students will have to update daily. This will not be hard to do once the first conversions have been made but it will be fun to see and I think the other students will find the information interesting. The students will be responsible for answering and updating the following facts.

You have been in school for _______ seconds.

You are __________ seconds away from the weekend (3:30 Friday).

You have spent _____________ seconds in your math class so far this school year.

Since Monday at 7:00 am, your heart has beat ________________ times.

CAPA students have flushed the toilets _____________times so far this year.

CAPA has used ___________ gallons of water just by flushing the toilets.

If you live in ________, you are _____________ inches away from home.

Christmas is _______________ seconds away.

You have only ___________ seconds left in this school year.

This bulletin board will be easy to update and will be updated daily, the number are constantly changing and some will increase as others decrease. Since my information will be time sensitive, I hope to have it up the first week of school. I do not expect my students to have a real grasp of the large number at this point, but this will simply require a quick lesson on conversions. Since we will be using conversions often during this lesson, this will be a quick check for understanding. I do not anticipate much trouble with conversions, but I will be prepared to assist if needed.

The ground work is now in place to begin the estimation portion of this unit. The students have been given a solid foundation of large numbers, a small refresher of conversions, and a reminder of the rules of exponents. I hope this will give them the confidence to attempt the problems I have designed for them. I call these problems "ball park problems" because the answers will not be exact numbers but rather educated estimations. I am very interested in watching the journey that the students will have to travel in order to answer some of the questions. I am also curious to see the different paths each group/student takes to get the answer.

I will guide the students on the first problem by listing the facts/questions they need to answer before they can begin. I plan on helping my students through every step of this first problem to make sure that they have a good understanding of the math and some of the methods we will use. It is only after that, that I will expect the students to work alone or in small groups.