Worksheet Grade 4 Math
Spindrift Bay Refill Station: Rounding Recycled Water Totals
A grade 4 worksheet where students round a fictional coastal town's recycled water totals to the hundred, thousand, and ten thousand, then divide totals evenly.
Objectives
- Students will round four-digit and five-digit whole numbers to a named place value.
- Students will divide a four-digit number by a one-digit number and identify the remainder.
- Students will explain why a rounded total is still useful in a written report.
Vocabulary
- Recycled water
- Wastewater that has been cleaned and used again, often to water parks, golf courses, and crops instead of being thrown away. Purple pipes usually carry it.
Also: round, place value, remainder, refill station
Teacher overview
Spindrift Bay is a fictional seaside town in the middle of a dry year. Rather than pull more water from its wells, the town cleans used water a second time and pipes it to a refill station, where tank trucks load up to water street trees and ball fields. The station's meter records an exact gallon count every day, and the crew rounds those counts for the weekly report. This worksheet asks students to round the station's totals to three different places and to share loads evenly among parks, trucks, and crates.
Student Worksheet
On Monday the refill station sent out 3,472 gallons. Round that number to the nearest hundred.
Round Monday's total of 3,472 gallons to the nearest thousand.
On Tuesday the station sent out 8,650 gallons. Round that number to the nearest hundred.
Round Tuesday's total of 8,650 gallons to the nearest thousand.
For the whole week the station sent out 26,418 gallons. Round that number to the nearest thousand.
Round the week's total of 26,418 gallons to the nearest ten thousand.
The town shares 1,842 gallons of recycled water evenly among 6 parks. How many gallons does each park get?
A crew shares 2,375 gallons evenly among 4 tank trucks. How many gallons does each truck get?
The crew shares 2,375 gallons evenly among 4 tank trucks. How many gallons are still in the tank after all 4 trucks are filled?
The crew packs 1,477 sample jugs into crates. Each crate holds 9 jugs. How many crates can the crew fill all the way?
The crew packs 1,477 jugs into crates that hold 9 jugs each. How many jugs are left over after the full crates are packed?
The town's report prints the week's total rounded to the nearest thousand instead of the exact number. Explain why a rounded number can still be useful to a reader.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
Answer: 3,500 gallons.
The hundreds digit is 4 and the digit to its right is 7, which is 5 or more, so the hundreds digit goes up by one and the digits after it become zeros.Answer: 3,000 gallons.
The thousands digit is 3 and the digit to its right is 4, which is less than 5, so the thousands digit stays and the rest become zeros.Answer: 8,700 gallons.
The hundreds digit is 6 and the digit to its right is 5, so the hundreds digit goes up to 7 and the rest become zeros.Answer: 9,000 gallons.
The thousands digit is 8 and the digit to its right is 6, so the thousands digit goes up to 9.Answer: 26,000 gallons.
The thousands digit is 6 and the digit to its right is 4, which is less than 5, so the thousands digit stays at 6.Answer: 30,000 gallons.
The ten thousands digit is 2 and the digit to its right is 6, so the ten thousands digit goes up to 3, giving 30,000 gallons.Answer: 307 gallons.
1,842 ÷ 6. Six goes into 18 hundreds 3 hundreds times, using 1,800 and leaving 42. Six goes into 42 seven times with nothing left, so each park gets 307 gallons.Answer: 593 gallons.
2,375 ÷ 4. Four goes into 23 hundreds 5 hundreds times, using 2,000 and leaving 375. Four goes into 375 ninety-three times, using 372 and leaving 3. Each truck gets 593 gallons.Answer: 3 gallons.
The division in item 8 leaves a remainder of 3, and those 3 gallons are too few to divide evenly among the trucks, so they stay in the tank.Answer: 164 crates.
1,477 ÷ 9. Nine goes into 14 hundreds 1 hundred times, leaving 577. Nine goes into 577 sixty-four times, using 576 and leaving 1. The crew fills 164 crates all the way.Answer: 1 jug.
The division in item 10 leaves a remainder of 1, so one jug sits in a crate that is not full.Answer: A rounded number is quicker to read and compare with other weeks, and it still tells the reader about how much water the station sent out.
Accept any answer that names easier reading, easier comparison, or a close enough estimate. Students should notice that 26,000 is only 418 away from the exact total.
Differentiation
Support
Give students a place-value chart with the ten thousands through ones columns labeled, and have them write each number into the chart before rounding. For the division items, provide the multiples of 6, 4, and 9 up to ten as a reference strip.
Extension
Ask students to find the smallest and largest whole-gallon totals that would round to 27,000 gallons at the nearest thousand, then explain how they know no other number works.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "round," "nearest," "left over," and "evenly" using a number line marked in hundreds, with 3,472 plotted between 3,400 and 3,500. Provide the sentence frame: I rounded ___ to ___ because the digit to the right is ___.
Extensions
Have students track their own school's daily lunchroom milk count for a week, round each day's count to the nearest ten, and compare the rounded weekly total with the exact one.