Do not work it out exactly. Slide the marker to where you think the answer lands, then lock it in.
Estimating is a skill in its own right, and in the 11+ it is your safety net: it tells you instantly whether an answer you have calculated is believable. The trick is to round each number to the nearest ten (or hundred) FIRST, multiply the easy numbers, then nudge. 49 rounds up to 50 and 21 rounds down to 20, so . The real answer is 1029, and you got within a whisker of it without doing any long multiplication. Notice the two roundings pulled in opposite directions, which is why the estimate lands so close.
What to say if they get stuck
Round both numbers to something friendly before you slide.
49 is nearly 50, and 21 is nearly 20. Those two are much easier to multiply.
, so the marker belongs just above the halfway mark of this line.
This is the wrong answer 11+ papers are built to offer, so it is worth watching for directly: a child who does this will look confident and still lose the mark. If it keeps happening on round to a stated place, the fix is the misunderstanding rather than more questions.
Where round to a stated place sits in the 11+
The 11+ does not test these skills in isolation, and practising one in the wrong order wastes the practice. These are the skills the curriculum map connects this one to.
Rounding depends on locating the rounding digit and adjacent place.
How round to a stated place differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises one other skill, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: round one integer or decimal to the stated place value, and it stops where the rounding place is explicit.
Questions parents ask about round to a stated place
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Round one integer or decimal to the stated place value. It is one of 55 named maths skills in the 11+, in the number strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
The skill map puts read place value first. Rounding depends on locating the rounding digit and adjacent place. If round to a stated place keeps going wrong, that is the thing to check before doing more of this one.
There is a specific mistake recorded against this skill: uses the wrong adjacent digit to decide rounding. 11+ papers are written to offer exactly that answer, so a child can be confident and still lose the mark. When it keeps happening, the fix is the misunderstanding rather than more questions.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Find the two labelled ticks that B sits between, then decide which of the two it is closer to.
The skill map draws the line here: The rounding place is explicit. A question past that line is testing a different named maths skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The number strand holds 13 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to round to a stated place are scale by a power of ten, solve a one-step number problem and subtract whole numbers or decimals. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use Roughly Right, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to round to a stated place, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Round to a stated place rests on something else being secure first
This skill depends on read place value. A free diagnostic checks those alongside every other maths skill, so you find out whether the problem is here or underneath it.
