Teaching Your Students How to Round With Decimals?

Your students probably have some familiarity with the rules of rounding, but let’s take a quick look at how you can example this concept to your students!

Step 1: Understand the Decimal Place Value

In numbers with decimals, like 5.78, the digits after the decimal point show smaller parts of a whole. The first digit after the decimal point is in the tenths place, the second is in the hundredths place, and so on.

Step 2: Find the Rounding Digit

To round, you need to look at the digit you want to round to. If you want to round to the nearest tenth (one decimal place), look at the digit in the hundredths place (the next one after the tenths). For example, in 5.78, we want to round to the nearest tenth, so we look at 7.

Step 3: Decide if You Need to Round Up or Down

If the digit you’re rounding to is 5 or greater, you round up. If it’s 4 or less, you round down.

Step 4: Round the Number

In our example, 7 is greater than 5, so we round up the tenths place. So, 5.78 rounded to the nearest tenth is 5.8. We changed the 7 to 8.

Remember, if you’re rounding to different decimal places, you’ll look at the digits to the right of that place to decide if you round up or down.

Interactive Decimal Rounding Activity

Learning how to round decimals is an important skill that students learn in years 5, 6 and 7. They learn how to round to the nearest whole number, the nearest tenth, the hundredth and so on. If you are looking for an interactive activity for your students to review this skill, you have come to the right place! Teach Starter has created a set of 8 interactive activities to help your students refine their decimal rounding skills.

This teacher-created resource includes the following activities:

• Identifying decimals based on a model and rounding to the nearest tenth
• Filling in values on a number line and rounding to the nearest tenth
• Filling in a place value chart and rounding to a given place
• Drag and drop activity after rounding to the nearest hundredth
• Sorting activity
• Using numbers to make a statement true
• Rounding maze

Easily Prepare This Interactive Rounding Activity for Your Students

Are you ready for your students to get their hands on this set of interactive slides? Head on over to the green download button to choose from the PowerPoint or Google Slides version of this resource. Please note that if you select the Google Slides option, you will first be prompted to make a copy of the resource to your personal drive before accessing it.

Guide your students to complete the activities in ‘Edit’ mode so they can drag and drop, type, and use the paint bucket tool to complete the activities.

This resource was created by Cassandra Friesen, a Teach Starter Collaborator. 

Ready for More Rounding Resources?

Don’t stop there! We’ve got more activities and resources that cut down on lesson planning time:  

teaching resource

Reel It in Rounding With Decimals – Interactive Task Cards

Guide your students to tackle questions where they must round decimals to the nearest whole number, tenth and hundredth with this set of 24 interactive task cards.

teaching resource

Decimal Designs – Differentiated Decimal Rounding Worksheet

Guide your students to round decimals to different places and create a beautiful design with this differentiated worksheet.

teaching resource

Rounding Decimals Worksheet

Encourage your students to round decimals to the nearest tenths and hundredths place with this worksheet.