As we continue our study of length and measurment, we did a fun- whole group activity, as well as worked it into a small group center for more application and practice for the kids.  The kids sit in a big circle and are given  1 or 2 objects that I have gathered from around the classroom. (I choose objects that can easily be ordered by length). I tell them that we are going to put all of these objects in order from shortest to longest. I start by putting one object down. We review why it's important to line objects up on one end and come up with a strategy to do that for all of the objects. (Here we used the strip between the carpet and tile). I call on a student to place his/her object down. I do not show them where to place it. They have to estimate where it will go in the whole scheme of things. For example, it wouldn't be the best idea to put the paperclip right next to the yard stick. Mostly, I let kids put things where they think they will go without interfering. Moving objects around to make room for new objects is part of the whole problem-solving process, and if I step in, I'm defeating the purpose. I do, however, guide them through questioning: I noticed you left a lot of room between your marker and the apple pointer. Can you tell me why you did that? The more objects that are on the floor, the harder it gets. Some objects are very close in size, and the kids really have to focus to see which is longer. It is an excellent opportunity to revisit good strategies for comparing lengths (i.e. lining objects up on one end). After a student places an object, I ask the class: Do you agree or disagree? If someone disagrees, I have them explain why. If the object needs to be moved, I have that person work with the student who placed it to move it to the correct spot. Eventually, we get all the objects placed. We did this on Monday, the rest of the week, students practiced again during small groups and recorded thier findings.  

Our long-term study of measurement continued this week during group circle time, and also at small group centers. We reviewed the vocabulary words of standard and non-standard units of measurement.  In the beginning of our unit,  we are going to work more with non-standard, because the concept is less complicated than standard units.  This week we used a popsicle stick as our non-standard tool, and compared objects.  They were either bigger, or smaller than our stick! We recorded all of this of course, for extra writing practice.

Now that we have developed our number sense, we are beginning to study measurement. This week, we learned two new terms - "estimate" and "actual". We found out that "estimate" is our guess on how big we think something is, and "actual" is how big something is using a form of measurement. We practiced estimating the height of our friends using the nonstandard form of measurement - unifex cubes! After using the unifex cubes to actually measure how big our friend was, we compared it to what we had estimated. Some were very close and others were surprised at how different our numbers were!

 After we have had a long hiatus from school over vacation, it was so nice to come together and brainsotrm all the methods of solving math problems! We all participated in exmaples of the different methods pictured here. We will continue to work on these different ways throughout the rest of the school year, but it was cool to see all the options we have! As we move forward and into the spring, our big concepts to cover will be measurement, shapes (2D and 3D) and we will touch on money and time.