Place value and number senseGrades 3–5
Rounding worksheets with answer key
Pick one rounding place, from tens up to ten thousands or from whole numbers down to hundredths, or mix whole-number places on one sheet. Set the number of problems, then print with an answer key.
- Fresh problems every time
- Answer key on its own page
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Rounding in one sentence
Rounding replaces a number with a nearby friendlier one, so you can estimate quickly and still be close. It first appears in third grade with tens and hundreds, grows to thousands and beyond in fourth, and returns in fifth grade for decimals. The rule never changes: find the rounding place, look one digit to the right, and decide whether to keep or raise the digit.
The line at the top of each sheet states that rule in plain words, so a student who forgets the cutoff can look it up without asking.
Choosing the place
Round to the nearest has eight choices.
- Ten, Hundred, Thousand and Ten thousand. Every line has the same shape, a number followed by an arrow and a blank. A ten sheet uses numbers up to the high hundreds, and the others scale up from there.
- Mixed places. Each line states its own place in words, such as "to the nearest hundred." This is the best test of whether a student reads the question.
- Whole number (decimals). Rounds numbers with two decimal places to the nearest whole number.
- Tenth and Hundredth. Tenths use two-decimal numbers, and hundredths use three-decimal numbers, so there is always a digit to look at.
Number of problems is 10 to 40. One-place sheets print in three columns, and the mixed sheet in two.
A good progression is tens, then hundreds, then mixed whole-number places, and only then decimals. Students who reach decimals still need the same logic, so a quick refresher on the whole-number rule saves frustration.
Worked example: 4,762 and 3,449
Round 4,762 to the nearest hundred.
- Underline the hundreds digit: the 7 in 4,762.
- Look at the digit to its right, the tens digit: 6.
- A 6 is 5 or more, so the 7 rounds up to 8.
- Every digit after the rounding place becomes zero: 4,800.
Round 3,449 to the nearest hundred.
- The hundreds digit is 4.
- The tens digit is 4, which is less than 5, so the 4 stays.
- Answer: 3,400.
The second example is the classic trap. A student might think "49 is almost 50, so round up twice." Only the single digit next to the rounding place matters.
A decimal case: round 6.347 to the nearest hundredth. The hundredths digit is 4. The digit to its right is 7, so the 4 goes up to 5. The answer is 6.35, and the key prints it with both decimal places.
Reading the answer key
- Cascading rounds. If a student gets 3,500 for the second example, they rounded 49 to 50 first. Ask them to cover everything but the one digit that decides.
- Dropping zeros. Writing 48 instead of 4,800 means the placeholders were left out.
- Rounding up a 9. For 2,963 to the nearest hundred, the 9 rounds up to 10, which carries into the thousands to give 3,000. Look for a student who writes 2,1000 or 29,00.
- Decimal trailing zeros. The key shows a tenth as one decimal place and a hundredth as two. An answer of 6.3 for a hundredth question is incomplete.
Where to go next
Rounding depends on knowing the place names, which the place value worksheets drill directly. Estimation is a natural next use, and students can round the numbers in a 3-digit addition and subtraction problem before solving it to check whether their answer is reasonable. For decimal practice with the same digits, try decimal times whole number sheets.