Teaching Measurement
- 1. Measurements! Why do we need them? Standard Non-standard
- 2. My objectives in this lesson were to have students understand the difference between standard and non-standard measurements and to know why standard measurements are so important. Using the book for this lesson was a great idea and the students really enjoyed. It was nice for them to be able to see the pictures and the words in a larger format and to interact with the story in a different way. Utah Standards addressed: Math Objective 2: Identify measurable attributes of objects and units of measurement, and use appropriate techniques and tools to determine measurements. a. Identify the appropriate tools for measuring length, weight, capacity, temperature, and time. b. Measure the length of an object using nonstandard units and count the units using groups of tens and ones. Objective 3: Collect, organize, and represent simple data. a. Collect and represent data using tables, tally marks, pictographs, and bar graphs. b. Describe and interpret data.
- 3. This was the first activity we did before completing the lesson. I had the students measure things around the rooms in stations using nonstandard measurements. We then were able to collect and graph our data. I went home and made the graph for the students showing the length of the rug in feet. We talked about the importance of standard measurement and then read the story.
- 5. Our World Rug Measurements This was the data we collected. The students were so excited to see this graph finished and loved to talk about and compare our data.
- 7. How Big is a Foot? By Rolf Myller This is the story we read, the following slides are examples from the story. All of the pictures are taken from the book .
- 8. Once upon a time there lived a King and his wife, the Queen. They were a happy couple for they had everything in the World.
- 9. However, when the Queen’s birthday came near the King had a problem. What could he give to someone who had everything?
- 10. He counted that the bed must be three feet wide and six feet long to be big enough to fit the Queen(including the crown which the Queen sometimes liked to wear to sleep.)
- 11. The students were extremely engaged during the story!
- 12. And forever after, anyone who wanted to measure anything used a copy of the King’s foot. And when someone said, “My bed is six feet long and three feet wide,” everyone knew exactly how big it was.
- 13. We used this slide to introduce to students the many different things that we measure. We had them discuss with a partner one of the items on the screen and talk about what is measured.
- 14. We were group sharing and talking about what the students thought each object measured.
- 15. The students were then required to measure items around the room using an “inchworm” that was five inches long. The students completed the following worksheet using standard measurements. The standards require that first graders can count by 5’s so this lesson helped reinforce that as well.
Editor's Notes
- #2: For my lesson I used a PowerPoint story to teach the importance of standard measurement. This lesson went over really well and the students loved it. The students loved being able to interact with technology and having all of the ideas really large was helpful for them. I wish I could have found a way to be able to let the students use the technology but my class was unable to go to the computer lab during the time I taught and we do not have a laptop cart at my school. If I were to do this again I would try to use sound as well. I was the one reading the story but it would have been fun to have a narration of someone else reading the story. I think this lesson went really well and had a positive impact on the students learning. While reflecting on what happened I realized that the activities were all very good. Because my students are not used to technology in the classroom it took them some time to calm down but once they were they were completely engaged. If I were to do this again I would make sure that the projector and visuals were all set up before the students came in so it wouldn’t be as much of a distraction. I realized that technology lessons take a lot of time and preparation but I was definitely glad I did it.