Source: Cyberchase: "Snow Day to be Exact"
Funding for the VITAL/Ready to Teach collection was secured through the United States Department of Education under the Ready to Teach Program.
In this video segment from Cyberchase, Inez is baking 50 cookies for her class and each cookie has to have four jelly beans on top. Inez has a jar full of jelly beans. She knows she needs at least 200 jelly beans, but rather than count all of the jellybeans, she decides to estimate to see if she has enough.
Investigations/Scott Foresman (2006)
Mathematical Thinking in Grade Four
Investigation 1, Sessions 1-3, pp. 4-22
Packages and Groups
Investigation 2, Sessions 2 and 3, pp. 24-27
Investigation 3, Sessions 4-6, pp. 46-50
Landmarks in the Thousands
Investigation 3, Sessions 3-5, pp. 43-63
Here are some Frame, Focus and Follow-up suggestions for using this video in a math lesson.
What is Frame, Focus and Follow-up?
Frame: What is an estimate? Is it just a guess? If you had to estimate how many golf balls were in a bucket, how would you go about doing it? Would multiplication or addition help in any way?
Focus: While watching this segment, notice how Inez goes about estimating how many jelly beans are in the jar. Write down her thought process in steps, and write an equation to go with each step of her problem solving. Also notice how the shape of the jar helps her to make an estimate.
Follow Up: Why did Inez count how many jelly beans were in a row on the bottom of the jar? How did she use multiplication to help her make a reasonable estimate? When you need a certain amount of an item and you're making an estimate like Inez did, is it better to go over or under on your estimate?
INEZ: This is going to be easy, now, Gatito. I just need to know I have at least two hundred jelly beans. Let’s see...
There’s about...5 across... and the same number back. So that’s 5 times 5 – or about 25 beans on the bottom layer. And it looks roughly...10 layers deep.
INEZ: Twenty five times ten. Two hundred fifty jellybeans! That’s close enough for me! She takes a handful of jellybeans from the jar and sets them on the counter.
INEZ: I have enough to make my cookies – and enough for us.
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