Estimating Lesson Starters and Online Activities

There are 366 different Starters of The Day, many to choose from. You will find in the left column below some starters on the topic of Estimating. In the right column below are links to related online activities, videos and teacher resources. A lesson starter does not have to be on the same topic as the main part of the lesson or the topic of the previous lesson. It is often very useful to revise or explore other concepts by using a starter based on a totally different area of Mathematics. Main Page
Estimating Starters: Air Traffic Control: Work out which aircraft are in danger of colliding from their positions and direction of travel. An exercise in understanding bearings. Angle Estimates: Estimate the sizes of each of the angles then add your estimates together. Big Bieber: If the dimensions of an object double, its volume increases by a factor of eight. Big Order: Estimate or calculate then put the large numbers in order of size. Breathe Easily: How many breaths have you taken in your lifetime? Calc-A-Hundred: A game for two players requiring a calculator and thinking skills. Estimating: Estimate the lengths of four lines then add your answers together. Estimating Percentages: Estimate the percentages of full circles and rectangles the sectors represent. Hot Estimates: Estimate the number of chillies in the photograph. Moon Lengths: Estimate the distances shown on this photograph of the moon's surface. Peanuts and Buttons: Two questions involving estimating a quantity. Pie Chart: An exercise in estimating what the sectors of a pie chart represent. Positions Please: Stand at the point between the classroom walls to represent a given number. Red Lines: Either estimate the lengths of the red lines or, if you know how, calculate how long they are. Second Holiday: Estimate then work out the period of time equal to the given number of seconds. Small images of these Starters :: Index of Starters Estimating Advanced Starters: Four Fraction Division: Explain why the answer to a series of fraction divisions is a whole number. Index of Advanced Starters Suggested Estimating Angles Estimate the size of the given acute angles in degrees. The short web address is: Transum.org/go/?to=estang Curriculum for Estimating: Year 5 Pupils should be taught to use rounding to check answers to calculations and determine, in the context of a problem, levels of accuracy more... Pupils should be taught to round decimals with two decimal places to the nearest whole number and to one decimal place more... Year 6 Pupils should be taught to round any whole number to a required degree of accuracy more... Pupils should be taught to use estimation to check answers to calculations and determine, in the context of a problem, an appropriate degree of accuracy. more... Pupils should be taught to solve problems which require answers to be rounded to specified degrees of accuracy more... Years 7 to 9 Pupils should be taught to round numbers and measures to an appropriate degree of accuracy [for example, to a number of decimal places or significant figures] more... Pupils should be taught to use approximation through rounding to estimate answers and calculate possible resulting errors expressed using inequality notation a<x≤b more... Years 10 and 11 Pupils should be taught to apply and interpret limits of accuracy when rounding or truncating, {including upper and lower bounds} more... Exam-Style Questions: There are almost a thousand exam-style questions unique to the Transum website. Feedback: Comment recorded on the 24 May 'Starter of the Day' page by Ruth Seward, Hagley Park Sports College: "Find the starters wonderful; students enjoy them and often want to use the idea generated by the starter in other parts of the lesson. Keep up the good work" Comment recorded on the 9 April 'Starter of the Day' page by Jan, South Canterbury: "Thank you for sharing such a great resource. I was about to try and get together a bank of starters but time is always required elsewhere, so thank you." Comment recorded on the 16 March 'Starter of the Day' page by Mrs A Milton, Ysgol Ardudwy: "I have used your starters for 3 years now and would not have a lesson without one! Fantastic way to engage the pupils at the start of a lesson." Comment recorded on the 25 June 'Starter of the Day' page by Inger.kisby@herts and essex.herts.sch.uk, : "We all love your starters. It is so good to have such a collection. We use them for all age groups and abilities. Have particularly enjoyed KIM's game, as we have not used that for Mathematics before. Keep up the good work and thank you very much Best wishes from Inger Kisby" Comment recorded on the 12 July 'Starter of the Day' page by Miss J Key, Farlingaye High School, Suffolk: "Thanks very much for this one. We developed it into a whole lesson and I borrowed some hats from the drama department to add to the fun!" Comment recorded on the 6 May 'Starter of the Day' page by Natalie, London: "I am thankful for providing such wonderful starters. They are of immence help and the students enjoy them very much. These starters have saved my time and have made my lessons enjoyable." Comment recorded on the 14 September 'Starter of the Day' page by Trish Bailey, Kingstone School: "This is a great memory aid which could be used for formulae or key facts etc - in any subject area. The PICTURE is such an aid to remembering where each number or group of numbers is - my pupils love it! Thanks" Comment recorded on the 3 October 'Starter of the Day' page by S Mirza, Park High School, Colne: "Very good starters, help pupils settle very well in maths classroom." Comment recorded on the 18 September 'Starter of the Day' page by Mrs. Peacock, Downe House School and Kennet School: "My year 8's absolutely loved the "Separated Twins" starter. I set it as an optional piece of work for my year 11's over a weekend and one girl came up with 3 independant solutions." Comment recorded on the 2 April 'Starter of the Day' page by Mrs Wilshaw, Dunsten Collage,Essex: "This website was brilliant. My class and I really enjoy doing the activites." Comment recorded on the 17 November 'Starter of the Day' page by Amy Thay, Coventry: "Thank you so much for your wonderful site. I have so much material to use in class and inspire me to try something a little different more often. I am going to show my maths department your website and encourage them to use it too. How lovely that you have compiled such a great resource to help teachers and pupils. Thanks again" Comment recorded on the 8 May 'Starter of the Day' page by Mr Smith, West Sussex, UK: "I am an NQT and have only just discovered this website. I nearly wet my pants with joy. To the creator of this website and all of those teachers who have contributed to it, I would like to say a big THANK YOU!!! :)." Comment recorded on the 3 October 'Starter of the Day' page by Mrs Johnstone, 7Je: "I think this is a brilliant website as all the students enjoy doing the puzzles and it is a brilliant way to start a lesson." Comment recorded on the 19 June 'Starter of the Day' page by Nikki Jordan, Braunton School, Devon: "Excellent. Thank you very much for a fabulous set of starters. I use the 'weekenders' if the daily ones are not quite what I want. Brilliant and much appreciated." Comment recorded on the i asp?ID_Top 'Starter of the Day' page by Ros, Belize: "A really awesome website! Teachers and students are learning in such a fun way! Keep it up..." Comment recorded on the 28 September 'Starter of the Day' page by Malcolm P, Dorset: "A set of real life savers!! Keep it up and thank you!" Comment recorded on the 2 May 'Starter of the Day' page by Angela Lowry, : "I think these are great! So useful and handy, the children love them. Could we have some on angles too please?" Comment recorded on the 23 September 'Starter of the Day' page by Judy, Chatsmore CHS: "This triangle starter is excellent. I have used it with all of my ks3 and ks4 classes and they are all totally focused when counting the triangles." Comment recorded on the 9 May 'Starter of the Day' page by Liz, Kuwait: "I would like to thank you for the excellent resources which I used every day. My students would often turn up early to tackle the starter of the day as there were stamps for the first 5 finishers. We also had a lot of fun with the fun maths. All in all your resources provoked discussion and the students had a lot of fun." Comment recorded on the 10 September 'Starter of the Day' page by Carol, Sheffield PArk Academy: "3 NQTs in the department, I'm new subject leader in this new academy - Starters R Great!! Lovely resource for stimulating learning and getting eveyone off to a good start. Thank you!!" Comment recorded on the 19 October 'Starter of the Day' page by E Pollard, Huddersfield: "I used this with my bottom set in year 9. To engage them I used their name and favorite football team (or pop group) instead of the school name. For homework, I asked each student to find a definition for the key words they had been given (once they had fun trying to guess the answer) and they presented their findings to the rest of the class the following day. They felt really special because the key words came from their own personal information." Comment recorded on the 14 October 'Starter of the Day' page by Inger Kisby, Herts and Essex High School: "Just a quick note to say that we use a lot of your starters. It is lovely to have so many different ideas to start a lesson with. Thank you very much and keep up the good work." Comment recorded on the 1 February 'Starter of the Day' page by Terry Shaw, Beaulieu Convent School: "Really good site. Lots of good ideas for starters. Use it most of the time in KS3." Comment recorded on the 28 May 'Starter of the Day' page by L Smith, Colwyn Bay: "An absolutely brilliant resource. Only recently been discovered but is used daily with all my classes. It is particularly useful when things can be saved for further use. Thank you!" Comment recorded on the 1 May 'Starter of the Day' page by Phil Anthony, Head of Maths, Stourport High School: "What a brilliant website. We have just started to use the 'starter-of-the-day' in our yr9 lessons to try them out before we change from a high school to a secondary school in September. This is one of the best resources on-line we have found. The kids and staff love it. Well done an thank you very much for making my maths lessons more interesting and fun." Comment recorded on the 7 December 'Starter of the Day' page by Cathryn Aldridge, Pells Primary: "I use Starter of the Day as a registration and warm-up activity for my Year 6 class. The range of questioning provided is excellent as are some of the images. I rate this site as a 5!" Comment recorded on the 21 October 'Starter of the Day' page by Mr Trainor And His P7 Class(All Girls), Mercy Primary School, Belfast: "My Primary 7 class in Mercy Primary school, Belfast, look forward to your mental maths starters every morning. The variety of material is interesting and exciting and always engages the teacher and pupils. Keep them coming please." Comment recorded on the 5 April 'Starter of the Day' page by Mr Stoner, St George's College of Technology: "This resource has made a great deal of difference to the standard of starters for all of our lessons. Thank you for being so creative and imaginative." Comment recorded on the 3 October 'Starter of the Day' page by Fiona Bray, Cams Hill School: "This is an excellent website. We all often use the starters as the pupils come in the door and get settled as we take the register." Comment recorded on the 19 November 'Starter of the Day' page by Lesley Sewell, Ysgol Aberconwy, Wales: "A Maths colleague introduced me to your web site and I love to use it. The questions are so varied I can use them with all of my classes, I even let year 13 have a go at some of them. I like being able to access Starters for the whole month so I can use favourites with classes I see at different times of the week. Thanks."	Notes: The ability to estimate values is an often overlooked part of Mathematics. Estimating lengths, weights, time, angles and solutions to problems should be practised regularly. Pupils should make sensible estimates of a range of measures in relation to everyday situations. A basic ability to estimate quantities without counting, like when choosing a checkout line at the supermarket, can be called a person’s innate ‘number sense’. Practising this kind of estimating may actually improve a pupil’s ability in other areas of mathematics. This is one of the findings of research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Practising estimation can be a lot of fun when presented as a game, challenge or group activity and provides the opportunity for the teacher to introduce variety in the mathematics classroom. Estimating Activities: Estimating Angles: Estimate the size of the given acute angles in degrees. Estimating: Estimation is a very important skill. Use this activity to practise and improve your skills. Estimating Percentages: Estimate the percentages represented by the diagrams. Rough Answers: An exercise on rounding values in a calculation to find an approximate estimate of the answer. Snooker Angles: An online game for one or two players requiring an ability to estimate angles as bearings. Animal Records: Match the values and the units to the animal world records. Estimation Golf: Play a round of golf using your estimation skills rather than golf clubs. Estimating Videos: Estimate Enormous Numbers: Learn how to use the powers of 10 to make amazingly fast estimations of big numbers with this animated explanation. Counting Crowds: Find out how statisticians use density samples to estimate their statistics. Estimating Worksheets/Printables: Take Sides Questions: Thirty pairs of numbers or calculations. Which one of the pair is the largest? Estimating External Links: Links to other websites containing resources for Estimating are provided for those logged into 'Transum Mathematics'. Subscribing also opens up the opportunity for you to add your own links to this panel. You can sign up using one of the buttons below: Search The activity you are looking for may have been classified in a different way from the way you were expecting. You can search the whole of Transum Maths by using the box below. Other Is there anything you would have a regular use for that we don't feature here? Please let us know. Suggested Estimation Golf Play a round of golf using your estimation skills rather than golf clubs. The short web address is: Transum.org/go/?to=golf
Teaching Notes: Many Transum activities have notes for teachers suggesting teaching methods and highlighting common misconceptions. There are also solutions to puzzles, exercises and activities available on the web pages when you are signed in to your Transum subscription account. If you do not yet have an account and you are a teacher, tutor or parent you can apply for one by completing the form on the Sign Up page. A Transum subscription also gives you access to the 'Class Admin' student management system, downloadable worksheets, many more teaching resources and opens up ad-free access to the Transum website for you and your pupils.
Comments Have today's Starter of the Day as your default homepage. Copy the URL below then select Tools > Internet Options (Internet Explorer) then paste the URL into the homepage field. Set as your homepage (if you are using Internet Explorer) Do you have any comments? It is always useful to receive feedback and helps make this free resource even more useful for those learning Mathematics anywhere in the world. Click here to enter your comments.