I started the unit by giving every child one Popsicle stick. I asked them to walk around the room and find one thing that was shorter and one that was longer than their Popsicle stick and record in their math journal.
This activity clearly revealed to me how much background knowledge my students already had on the topic of comparing lengths.
Knowing this, I decided to focus more on the importance of always measuring with the same tool rather than comparing lengths.
The next day I wrote the following on the board:
I asked, "which name is a longer name?" The class was pretty divided between the two but most said it wasn't a fair comparison because I wrote Sam's name big and Emary Kate's name small. I then went back and re-wrote their names the same size. We talked about how that relates to measuring items. We have to always make sure we measure with the same item. After that, each child wrote their name on grid paper and lined them up by length.
To close our lesson, we went through and measured our longest and shortest names with a Popsicle stick and then again with a unifix cube. As a class, we compared the results. I reiterated the importance of always measuring with the same item!
Today, we did a little more comparing lengths focusing on measuring with the same item. I placed a piece of tape on the floor and asked one child to measure it with popsicle sticks.
After that, I asked a few more students to measure the same piece of tape with unifix cubes. This took SO much longer and we were able to discuss the reasons why this was not an accurate comparison.
Lastly, I posed the following problem for the kids: "My flower is 2 popsicle sticks long. My stick is 12 unifix cubes long. Which one is longer?"
After measuring, we learned that only 2 popsicle sticks is longer than 12 unifix cubes!
Check back in as we discuss height and weight!
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