The Rounding Duck

While trying to review my kiddos for the TAKS test I noticed they needed help on rounding to estimate answers. I googled possible lessons and found a story that a teacher tells her kids each year to have them think about rounding.

The story goes like this: "Once there was a duck that needed to cross the street. She waddled to the corner and looked carefully up and down the street for cars or trucks, and when she was sure she was safe, she began to waddle across the street. She got only a waddle or two when suddenly a huge truck appeared. She knew she would need to get out of the street. What were her two choices?
The truck barrels past, and once again the duck can venture out into the street, after looking both ways, of course. She gets most of the way to the other corner when, wouldn't you know it... another huge truck is bearing down on her. What can she do?
Now, I go back one more time to the first corner, and give the duck one last waddle across the street. This time she gets exactly halfway across the street, and there comes another truck, and I ask them what she should do. I remind them that she always picked the closer corner to waddle to, and now both corners are the same distance away. They decide that she should go on to the far corner since that is where she wanted to go anyway.

My kids found this story to be quite ridiculous and funny at the same time. They really seemed to get it though. Anytime they weren't sure, I would just ask, "What would the duck do?" I remind them that they don't want the duck to get hit by a truck, they have to make up their mind about which side of the street the duck should go to.

Oh, like the teacher warned in the lesson, she had to rein her kids back in and ask them to work with her on this. I had to do the same...my kids said that when the duck was exactly in the middle of the street, he was safe because a truck would drive on either side of him. I then had to draw a picture of the "road" (aka number line) on the board and a truck that took up the entire street to reinforce the idea that the duck MUST make a decision!

When we were discussing the light rail that is going to be in Austin soon, we mentioned that the duck would no way survive the train if it were coming and the duck had to make up his mind to cross the street or go back. It may have survived the locomotives that were first brought to Texas to bring supplies and people (Texas history), but definitely not the speed of the light rail. This duck may be the new mascot of our class because they thought more about him today than they've thought about anything all year.