Last year I used Estimation 180 almost weekly in my middle school classes. Students had access to this file on their iPads and filled it in each week. This worked ok, but I wanted to find another way of doing this that students publicly committed to an answer. I think I’ve seen other teachers who have their students use Post-it notes and put their answers on the board, but this just wasn’t something I could envision working in my classroom on a regular basis. For one, I covet my Post-it notes way too much to have students use them regularly for this. 😉
I missed doing these activities with students and knew my students could use practice with their estimation skills. After becoming more familiar with Desmos activity builder this summer, I thought that seemed like a much more realistic option for my classroom than something like Post-its.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to combine Estimation 180 and Desmos. When I was looking for what else was out there, I struggled to find something to steal from someone else. I saw this tweet from Andrew Stadel, which is awesome. However, I was looking for something quick I could use as a warm-up activity. My goal was to combine Desmos with Estimation 180 into an activity that could be done in 5-10 minutes with students. I wanted to be able to put the class code up for students as they walked in the room and let them go so that I could take care of attendance, passing back papers, etc.
This is what I came up with and used on 3 consecutive days in one of my classes this week.
Overall, I liked how this went compared to how I did this last year, and I realized how much my students really need practice with this! I think I will continue to use this structure, but I know this could be made better. What would you do to improve this?
Update: Since the original post, I’ve done a few more of these with students. I’ll add the links to all the activities I’ve done below.
Tissues
Staples
Licorice