In my last blog post, I shared my 3 favorite series of Estimation 180 tasks. The Basketball court tasks have video reveals and I love pausing the video reveal for 3 reasons:

1. It closes the Info Gap for students.
2. It allows students to refine their final estimate.
3. It makes the payoff even sweeter. 

In the video below, I use 4 examples to illustrate these 3 reasons. 

Recently, I was in a 6th grade classroom doing a couple of the Geometry tasks from the Estimation180 Toolkit. Students are to estimate the area of composite figures, but we first started with covering a 9"x15" rectangle with square inch tiles. However, the students didn't know it was a 9"x15" rectangle. Students had already made two rounds of estimates before I paused the video about 14 seconds in, showing students there were 3 rows with 15 square inch tiles in each row. It was so powerful to pause the video because it closed the Info Gap and give them one final chance to refine their estimate. As you'll see in the video their reaction made it so sweet. It's amazing how much more accurate their estimates became because of pausing the video. When they saw the final seconds of the reveal, it was as if they were NASA celebrating the landing of a spacecraft in outer space. Ok, not that exciting, but it's still awesome they found it exciting.  Check it out in the video above.

Whether it is an Estimation 180 video reveal or the 3rd act of a 3-Act task, I recommend pausing the video to give students a bit more information and allow them to refine their estimate one last time. My new favorite task is in the Grade 6 Estimation 180 Toolkit where students learn about ratios and one of the many tasks (with video reveals) is estimating the amount of red & yellow counters that form a beautiful hexagon. See the video above.

If you haven't seen what's inside the Estimation 180 Toolkit, then I recommend you check them out or share with colleagues. It's like a supercharged Estimation 180 experience. Get a Free Preview here.

Hexagons are the Best-a-gons!