Oakland Terrace Weather Page Celsius

	Students in Ms. Flory's and Mr. Ramienski's Grade 5 math classes used Google Maps to find the distance between their house and Oakland Terrace. The distances were given in decimal form to the nearest one hundred thousandth of a mile. The distance to this house:

This student then colored in the distance to her house to the nearest thousandth of a mile using the thousandths grid. She colored in .632 miles, or 632 thousandths.	Students often struggle to understand the concept of rounding. But it is clear that when rounding to the nearest hundredth, about the same amount of the whole is colored in. By simply taking away the 2 thousandths from the previous representation, the student is left with .63 of a mile, or 63 hundredths. Hundredths are much easier to deal with than thousandths, but less accurate.	When rounding to the nearest tenth, the student needs to consider whether .63 is closer to 6 tenths or 7 tenths. Looking at the hundredths grid, it is closer or easier to take away 3 hundredths and end up with 6 tenths than to add 7 hundredths and end up with 7 tenths. The distance rounds to .6 or 6 tenths.

This student lives .574 miles from Oakland Terrace.	Which rounds to .57 miles.	Which rounds to .6, because it is easier to add 3 hundredths to the previous grid than it is to take away 7 hundredths.

	Students were then able to compare the distance they live from Oakland Terrace to the distances other students live from the school. We discovered that because our school area is so large, some students, like Giana, live almost 2 miles away (1.958 miles).

This map shows where students in Ms. Flory's class live in relation to Oakland Terrace.

Number line showing distances students live from Oakland Terrace. The distances are represented on thousandth and hundredth grids.

Mr. Ramienski's class placed the values representing the distances from Oakland Terrace on a number line from 0 to 2 miles.

The visual representations of the decimal values allow students to order and compare values that are very close together. The amounts in this picture are all close to one whole (mile). The students must consider place value: which is more, 1.2 or 1.24?

Indicators:
6.5.1.1 read, write, and representinterchangeably simple fractions,
decimals, and percents usingsymbols, words, and models.

6.5.2.1 compare and order decimalsto the thousandths place and describe
them using place value concepts.