Rounding Up or Down? Sort the Numbers

Twelve numeral chips sit in a panel on this 3rd grade page — 481, 52, 329, 418, 85, 65, 549, 647, 426, 24, 72 and 13 on the sheet shown — and two large bins stand below, one headed round down with a falling arrow and one headed round up with a rising one. Each bin is divided into nine empty cells. The child decides which way each number goes to the nearest ten and writes it into a cell in the right bin.

The rounded answer is never written on this page, which is the whole idea: the task is the decision and nothing else, so a child who can round but cannot say why gets no cover from the arithmetic. Six of the chips are two digits and six are three, and two of them end in five, so the rule has to be applied rather than felt. Seven go up and five go down, an uneven split that stops the bins being filled alternately.

One sheet, twelve chips, two bins. Each bin is printed with nine cells, more than either will need, so several will be left empty and that is expected rather than a sign of a missed number. This is the decision face of the rounding family; use it between the nearest-ten base page and the nearest-hundred sheet, where the same decision moves one place to the left.