Skill 3E
Rounding to Nearest Tens Place.
The skill of rounding is difficult for many students.  If your student has trouble with this skill you will definitely want to read our "great trick" for performing accurate rounding.  We detail it below the problem if you would like to try it with the worksheet practice. For #1, 12 would round down to 10. For #2, 25 would round up to 30 (since the number to the right of the tens place is "5" - For #3, 95 would round up to 100 - and for #4, 74 would round down to 70. See below for more explanation.

Round each number to the nearest 10.
1.

12

____
2.

25

____
3.

95

 ____
4.

74

____
Rounding numbers is often difficult for many students as they have a very difficult time remembering when to round up and when the place value number should stay the same.
We have a great trick for this that makes it much easier to learn!

There are many "tricks" for rounding - Here are the steps to the best one we've seen:
 1. Underline the place value that we are rounding to - here, the student would underline the tens place. 
 2. If the number to the right of the underlined number is 4 or less then the underlined digit stays.
 3. If the number to the right is 5 or more then the underlined digit goes up one.
 4. Oh yes, one more thing - The number(s)  to the right of the underlined digit is so tired after telling the underlined digit what to do that it explodes and turns into a 0.

To abbreviate:

Step 1 - Underline the place value to be "rounded to" asked for in the problem.
Step 2 - Put the number to the right into the computer and decide whether it stays or goes up 1.
Step 3 - Explode the number to the right and turn it into a zero.  Oh yes, if you make an explosion sound in your mouth while teaching this on our rounding worksheets your student will get a laugh out of that and remember 3 times as well!

And there you have it - the four steps to successful and flawless rounding.