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What is it?
Estimation is such an important skill for students to learn. Not only is it a favourite of GCSE exam setters, good estimation skills are a vital tool in the armory of today’s well-informed global citizens, ensuring they are not duped by unscrupulous merchants and fake news!
This resource covers a whole sequence of lessons. It all kicks off with a wonderful Spider activity, adapted from Alutwyche’s Spiders which have featured previously on Resource of the Week. Then follows a sequence or really well-chosen worked examples, complete with step-by-step solutions. We then have practice questions which get increasingly complex, interleaving in High Value Concepts, all culminating in a lovely challenge activity!
How can it be used?
I love the way the author states prerequisite knowledge in the resource description:
- BIDMAS
- Percentages of amounts
- Rounding with significant figures and decimals.
Dealing with this first ensures that students will get the most out of this sequence of lessons, instead of having to think hard about concepts they should already be familiar with.
I always advise adapting resources on TES to suit the needs of your class, but this is one of the few resources where I have not found the need to change anything. I love the choice and variety of the questions. The only thing I do differently is to hand-write the steps of the worked examples live in class, as opposed to using the pre-written ones. However, just seeing the steps and the associated commentary vastly improved how I delivered them.
In short, this is a brilliant resource!
Thank you for sharing!
Craig Barton
Download: Estimation by rounding
View the author’s other resources