Possible student responses

I could begin by counting how many are in a few students’ desks to get a rough estimate of the number of books in each and multiply that number by the number of students. Then I will need to get an estimate for all the other books in the room. I can count how many books are on one shelf and multiply by the number of shelves (for the shelves that look like they have the same number of books). I can round any of the numbers I get from counting to make the multiplication easier. Then, I’ll add the estimates of the number of books on the shelves and in the desks.