Noticing Blog- Estimation lesson

Today as I watched my mentor teacher start to teach math again, I really noticed something about her pedagogy that I would like to emulate.  She was covering an estimation review (which I had originally taught during my math GLT).  She used two stacks of pennies.  The first stack, she told them had 10 pennies and then labeled it in front of them. She then asked them to make an estimation and not count, about how many they thought were in the second grouping.  When I taught estimation, I did mostly the same lesson but with blocks in jars (one jar had 10) that I had them pass around.  But what my mentor teacher did next is what I wish I had done: instead of having them share out loud, going around in a circle as I did, Meghan had them each write their estimation on a sticky note and come up and give it to her.  She then could have a quick guided conversation with them about their answer (thus gauging their understanding a bit better than my simple going around the circle) and she also had their names written on their sticky notes (to keep track of whose guess was whose).  There were two other benefits of my mentor's set up.  First, the students who don't like to be put on the spot didn't have to say their estimation and feel uncomfortable.  Second, and this was my most favorite part of all, Meghan was able to order the student guesses on our board, showing which ones were farthest away from 10.  I think this made guessing a lot more concrete for the students.  There were obvious (to some) estimations, like 9, that the larger stack couldn't be (because the smaller stack had 10).  This way, kids could keep their anonymity and hear their fellow students' kid logic about why a particular estimation was farther or closer to a number.