#MTBoS Mission 3: Estimation 180

THANK YOU, #MTBoS, for reminding me of the awesome Estimation 180 site! I found it over the summer and had it marked in my favorites, but haven't gotten around to using it with my students. This will be my number one mission in the next few weeks.

Estimation is such an important skill, and yet, I don't practice it enough with my students. I encourage them to estimate when operating with decimals...so they know where to put the decimal in their answers...and to estimate when solving all sorts of problems...so they can check the reasonableness of their answers, but they just don't have a great handle on it. Most of the time if I ask for an estimation, they just work the problem to find an exact answer and then round to the nearest 10 or something. All backwards.

What they really need is real life estimation. That is what Estimation 180 is all about. While I do have some technological challenges for using this in my classroom, I am sure I can overcome them pretty easily with just a little effort.

So, how would I use Estimation180 in my classroom? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is to use it as a warm-up exercise. This would be a great first step, so I can model the thought process for my students. Once they get the hang of estimation, how the site works and what the goal is, I might put a link to a specific exercise on the class wiki (or embed a series there) and ask them to try it out and blog about their thoughts and estimates.

If I can keep this going, I am sure that I will eventually have a few students who want to try it out for themselves, so I'd help them brainstorm ideas and set up photo shoots to create their own. Of course, that would be followed by presenting the student-made estimation challenges to classmates, or even to the younger students down the hall. What a great way for my outliers to feel a part of the school...send them to an elementary class to teach about estimation with their very own creation!

Now, I'm on a roll...school wide contest to create new ones? Weekly estimation activities displayed in the hallways with a place for students (and adults) to submit their estimates? slips of paper in a jar? stickers on a graph (you know, like that commercial)? student run exit polls?

I think I'm getting in over my head a bit here.

First step, use as a warm-up tomorrow morning. We will see where it goes from there :)

**Estimation 180 update! I did use Day 1 as a warm-up with my grade 6 & 7 classes. They did a great job estimating the height of Mr. Stadel. With 7th, I also went to Day 2 without revealing the Day1 answer and they estimated the height of Mrs. Stadel. The next day I revealed his true height and asked for adjustments to her height. About half the class changed their estimates and were able to articulate why they decided to make the change. All of their new changes made sense and they were excited to see how close they were to the real values.

Gonna try to keep this going!