Planning GuideGrade 5
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Estimation Strategies

Strand: Number
Outcome: 2

Step 4: Assess Student Learning

Guiding Questions

  • Look back at what you determined as acceptable evidence in Step 2.
  • What are the most appropriate methods and activities for assessing student learning?
  • How will I align my assessment strategies with my teaching strategies?

Sample Assessment Tasks

In addition to ongoing assessment throughout the lessons, consider the following sample activities to evaluate students' learning at key milestones. Suggestions are given for assessing all students as a class or in groups, individual students in need of further evaluation and individual or groups of students in a variety of contexts.

A. Whole Class/Group Assessment

Examples of Whole Class/Group Assessment  Word Document

B. One-on-One Assessment

  1. Ask the student to explain to you the difference between estimating an answer to a problem and calculating the answer using paper-and-pencil. If necessary, coach the student by providing an example of a problem and having the student estimate the answer prior to calculating it. Have the student explain his or her thinking when making an estimate. Provide guidance as necessary to use the front-end or compatible numbers strategy. Encourage the student to refine the estimate by using compensation.
  2. Present the following problem to the student and have him or her read it orally. You have a piece of string and cut off 46.8 cm, leaving 138.6 cm. Estimate the length of string you had at the beginning.

    Use the following prompts to guide the student's thinking, if necessary:
    • State the problem in your own words.
    • What do each of the numbers in the problem represent – a part or a whole?
    • What is the unknown in the problem – a part or a whole?
    • What number sentence could you write to show the meaning of the problem?
    • What operation will you use to solve the problem? Explain.
    • Use an estimation strategy that makes sense to you to find the answer to the problem.  Explain your thinking as you write the numbers. (Hint: provide guidance in using the front-end or compatible numbers strategies, if necessary.)
    • Explain how you know your estimate is quite close to the calculated answer. (Hint:  have the student use compensation, if appropriate, to refine the estimate.)
    • Calculate the answer to the problem using paper and pencil to record your personal strategy.
    • Compare your calculated answer with your estimated answer.
  3. Use the same procedure as outlined in Question 2 with the following problem:
    There are 52 candies in each of 23 bags. Estimate how many candies there are in all the bags.
  4. Have the students complete the following:
    Create a problem that requires only an estimated answer to solve it. Solve the problem you created by estimating the answer and explaining your thinking.

C. Applied Learning

Provide opportunities for the students to use computational estimation strategies in a practical situation and notice whether or not the strategies transfer. For example, ask a student if a $10 bill will cover the cost of buying a milkshake for $3.98 and a sub for $6.59. Have him or her explain the thinking done to solve the problem. Does the student:

  • use estimation in solving this problem?
  • explain clearly why a $10 bill would not cover the cost of the two items?
  • apply the estimation skills in solving other problems? For example: About how many photo pages are needed for 220 photos if each page holds 8 photos?

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