Apply Rounding

10 min

Narrative

This Warm-up prompts students to make sense of a problem before solving it, by familiarizing themselves with a context and the mathematics that might be involved. This Warm-up gives students a chance to analyze and ask questions about the set of data they will use in a later activity.

Launch

  • Groups of 2
  • Display the image.
  • “What do you notice? What do you wonder?”
  • 1 minute: quiet think time
Teacher Instructions
  • “Discuss your thinking with your partner.”
  • 1 minute: partner discussion
  • Share and record responses.

Student Task

What do you notice? What do you wonder?

plane altitude (feet)
WN11 35,625
SK51 28,999
VT35 15,450
BQ64 36,000
AL16 31,000
AB25 35,175
CL48 16,600
WN90 30,775
NM44 30,245

Sample Response

Students may notice:
  • All the numbers are in the ten-thousands or are five-digit numbers.
  • The planes are identified with a name with two letters and two numbers.
  • All the altitudes are between 15,000 and 36,000 feet.
  • The altitudes have 0, 5, or 9 in the ones place.
Students may wonder:
  • What does “altitude” mean?
  • How can we tell what the altitude of a plane is?
  • Where is the measurement taken from? If a plane doesn’t change its position up or down but flies over a mountain or a valley, does the altitude change?
  • What if more than one plane is at the same altitude? Is that dangerous?
Activity Synthesis (Teacher Notes)
  • Explain that altitude is the distance of an object from sea level. Most commercial planes that carry passengers fly at an altitude between 33,000 and 41,000 feet. An altitude of 35,000 feet (7 miles) is typical. Lighter airplanes tend to fly at lower altitudes, around 10,000 feet.
  • “Which of these airplanes might be smaller aircrafts? Which might be larger passenger planes?”
Standards
Building Toward
  • 4.NBT.3·Use place value understanding to round multi-digit whole numbers to any place.
  • 4.NBT.A.3·Use place value understanding to round multi-digit whole numbers to any place.

20 min

15 min