Measuring Length

How do Grade 1/2 students learn about non-standard units?  The answer to that is easy:  They just do it!  To help our Grade 1 PLC get some ideas and have some discussion around measurement Ranald offered up his classroom to the 9 teachers for us to use to get some ideas and brainstorm some solutions on how to tackle our measurement hurdles.

Ranald wanted to try something a little different with his class, so he decided to do his lesson as a Bansho.  When you do that, you have everything from your learning goals and success criteria right through to your highlights/summary sheet all in one spot.  Usually this is done on brown craft paper or mural paper.  Here is what his finished one looked like:

He began with putting his learning goals up for his students to see. 

Then was his Minds on activity.  In this lesson they were deciding what non-standard unit would be the best to use when measuring various classroom objects.  You can see they had to estimate first (a skill that many students struggle with) and then they did the actual measurement based on what unit they chose.

 For the action, the students were given a piece of paper and rolled a number cube to see how many cubes they would be using to measuring.  Ranald chose to do this as a way to help speed the process along to get the students measuring objects around the room.  The students then got to work moving around the classroom finding things that were about as long as their "ruler."

As a consolidation, the students then shared how long their ruler was, and then what they measured in the room that were about that long.  You can see some of the things that they measured from the classroom:



 The class also created a highlights sheet of things that they need to remember when they measure objects. 

What the group found interesting was that the highlights that were created had more to do with the minds on than the action part of the lesson.  That lead the group to a great discussion as to what we could have done different to pull more highlights from the action than the minds on.


Seeing the lesson, and another person's classroom, is just part of the experience.  Talking about the lesson and what changes we would make is a greater part of the experience.  When we talk as a group we are able to flush out other lessons, and talk about where we think the unit can go and how to move the students along. 

Thank you for a great morning Ranald!