The Round-up Gang!

Today the fourth graders had lots of fun trying to solve the jigsaw puzzle. It was based on the concept of rounding off. The children worked in groups. They divided the cards, then rounded their problems in the cards, matched with the answer cards, and  finally assembled the diamond shape! :)
The session started with a good discussion as to what is rounding, the literal meaning of it! Same answer in different forms:
a) if number greater than 5 or above we round off to the higher multiple of 10.
When prompted to think the english meaning of rounding and explain. Responses were:
b) circling
Little more prompting, with an example let us round up the children in the class. Then one child responded very innocently, "Ma'm my example may not exactly relate to numbers, but I think rounding means gathering!" It was really amazing as the child made an attempt to relate the meaning of the word to the process we do in the Mathematics.
Many times we say, let us round up the topic, i.e. discuss the main points that will summarise the whole topic! Thus, rounding in mathematics will mean that instead of taking the exact number we choose an easier number which is closer to the exact number. Easier numbers are generally the multiples of 10, 100, etc.
Extending from here, the concept was discussed and nicely applied by the children in the activity.

Following are some photos depicting their excitement and involvement in the activity.

They finally rounded up all the numbers!! :)

It is our endeavour to emphasise out-of-the-box thinking which prepares you better to solve problems in most situations of life as well! :)