I hear ya, nobody likes significant figures. But I have a few tricks for getting kids excited about significant figures. Some of them are easier said than done, but I assure you, it’s not too tough.
Attitude
Obviously, if you are disgruntled over significant figures, you’ll have a lot of work in convincing you students to be excited about significant figures. If you go into your first few weeks of school detailing how cool science can be, this is much easier. I like to talk about how science isn’t exact, it changes over time as we discover new things, but that it’s important to be accurate. We even take some time to brainstorm what would happen if your doctor gave you medicine with inexact measurements. (That’s usually a science they can understand without having to know too much about the field.)
I mean, I really enjoy significant figures. Truly! They help us to maintain precision, and not accidentally lie about how accurate our tools are. That’s why I studied chemistry, and probably why you did too. There’s of course, a sense of beauty in the chemistry itself, but there’s also something special about data. You want to keep it clean and precise and truthful. Sig figs help with that!
How You Teach it
I’ve taught significant figures quite a few times, and to a large number of students. What I can say from that is, students really LOVE the Pacific Atlantic rule for significant figures. I can remember this one student my first year that always asked “can we go back to sigfigs?”
In case you don’t know, when the decimal is PRESENT in a number, you count all the digits starting on the left (Pacific side of the number) beginning with the first non-zero number. Everything that comes after is a significant digit. This rule works to eliminate preceding zeros, sandwiched zeros and trailing zeros.
When the decimal is ABSENT, you count from the first non-zero number on the Atlantic (right) side of the number.
I find that the Pacific-Atlantic rule makes significant figures much easier for students to grapple. When they find that it’s easy, it’s way more exciting. Why? Because kids like to do easy stuff! I mean, we all do, right? Teaching it this way eliminates all of the significant figures rules that can easily make this topic very intimidating. I actually teach both the standard rules and the Pacific Atlantic rules in my significant figures lesson. This gives kids the option to choose, though I’m not sure I’ve ever met a kid who prefers the classic rules.
Activities to Reinforce
There are certainly activities to get kids to practice with significant figures, but they’re not all created equally. Some are more fun than others. In my interactive notebooks, students will have some “worksheet practice” with both counting significant figures and math with significant figures.
While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with worksheets, it’s just that they can get old fast. Especially with a traditionally boring topic. I like to keep my interactive notebooks simple because they’re supposed to be more of a study tool than anything else. Making it flashy doesn’t really help them to ACTUALLY learn. There’s two main activities that we do to get students excited for significant figures.
Significant Figures Pixel Art
First is the pixel art activities. We begin with some practice counting significant figures, and then some math with sig figs. The pixel art activities are in Google Sheets and each has twenty questions. In the center is a block of cells that are covered up. As the students get questions right, the sheet marks them correct or incorrect. Correct answers uncover a hidden image. I love this because it immediately tells kids if they are correct or incorrect, so it’s amazing for self assessment. But my favorite part is the hidden image! It keeps the kids engaged in what usually would be a boring topic. My students love to try to guess what the hidden image is while they do the sheet. These activities can be found in my TPT store.
Significant Figures Race
I also have a competition to get kids excited about significant figures. This is a worksheet, but I use it a bit differently. I like to set up the kids in small groups. Each group gets their own copy of a math with significant figures worksheet. The first student will answer a math problem. Their answer will move into the next question and be passed to student 2. That answer will move into question three, and student 3 will try the next question.
The groups of students race to finish all ten questions. If they have the right answer for question 10, I know all the other answers must also be correct, and they’ll win a prize. If not, they have to go back and find the error on their page. And of course, they’ll have to fix all the answers that come after the incorrect answer.
On TPT I have ten different versions of this worksheet. You can use them all at once and give different groups different sheets. But you could also do this same activity a few times throughout the school year to keep them sharp! You can click this link to get a 5 question sample of this activity to try with your students. It would make a great bell ringer activity!
