Measurement (3)

Length (unit) Hunt

source: Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally by John A. Van De Walle, Karen S. Karp, and Jennifer M. Bay-Williams. Activity 19.6

Materials:
things for each pair of students to use as a unit (it should be equal to a standard unit), for example

• strip of card stock
• a stick
• a length of rope

Directions:

• give each pair of students the thing you want them to use to measure
• Then tell them to look for 5 things that are shorter than, longer than, or about the same as their target unit
• they should record these things (words or pictures)
• this will help improve familiarity with important standard unit

Be Ready for the Bell:

source: Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally by John A. Van De Walle, Karen S. Karp, and Jennifer M. Bay-Williams. Activity 19.25

Materials:

• recording sheet for each student with a set of clock faces and space to record digital time under clock faces (see blackline masters 33)
• timer

Directions:

• Give students the recording sheet
• Secretly set timer to go off at the hour, half hour, or minute. 
• When the bell rings, students should look up and record the time on the clock face and in numerals
• This encourages students to think about the passage of time and also to think about the relationship between the analog clock and the digital numerals

Personal Benchmarks:

source: Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally by John A. Van De Walle, Karen S. Karp, and Jennifer M. Bay-Williams. Activity 19.2

Materials:

• rulers 
• tape measures

Directions:

have students measure their ____ length:

• foot
• stride
• handspan (stretched fingers together)
• width of fingers
• arm span  (finger to finger and finger to nose)
• distance around wrist
• distance around waist
• height to shoulder
• height to waist
• height to head

some of these will be useful benchmarks for standard units

(average child child's fingernail is about 1 cm and most people have 10cm somewhere on their hands)