Gettin' Our Measurement Mojo On!

Happy Sunday, no school Monday! I love Monday holidays

when I feel like I can catch my breath and get caught up!  

Last week was a whirlwind with two half days, parent/teacher conferences,

 our daughter's birthday, our wedding anniversary and Valentine's Day!  WHEW!

 I thought I'd take a minute to show you what we've been up to...

It's been all things measurement for the past few weeks.  

We've also been working on opinion writing this quarter and wrote our opinions 

on the animals that we think make the best pets.

           

To tie our math to our writing I had students make these perimeter pets.

I saw these on Pinterest  and adapted them for my second graders.

I always like to read aloud How Big Is A Foot? as a starting point for 

our measurement unit. It's a quirky little book that lends itself to 

all kinds of  activities and my kids love it!

Source

I found this cute video on YouTube. My class was quite 

impressed with this little reader and decided hands down that he reads 

with a good EAR! Expression, Accuracy, and Rate! 

It made my teacher heart so happy that they noticed! 

Source

To really illustrate the need for standardized units,

partners measured a tape line with their feet then 

compared their measurements and explained the difference.

Next,  we created and named our own units...

The purpose of this was to have students measure an object twice 

using two different units of different lengths. (2.MD.2)

I gave each group a handful of strips of paper cut to different lengths.

Students chose one to be their 'unit', named it, and measured specific items 

in their desk. They then compared their lengths with a partner and 

discussed how and why the measurements of 

the exact same items were different and how this related to the size of 

 their units. 

The next day we did a quick review under the document camera. I had a student 

measure a pencil twice with a cube and a large paperclip. I posed the question,

"How can you explain why these measurements are different?"

We did some measuring and line plotting in our math journals.  

 I had a parent volunteer cut lots of colored strips making sure the lengths 

were between 1-8 inches. I gave each group a basket full and had them choose 12 

strips to measure and record on a line plot. I save the strips in a ziplock bag in my 

measurement file so they're ready to go for next year!

It CAN be a bit tricky for seven year olds to keep all of the measurement vocabulary 

straight,so to help them connect tools, units, and types of measure we used these 

task cards and charts during our math stations.

I'm linking up with the (seriously!) amazing Amanda from

Teaching Maddeness for the very first Must Read Monday!

Be sure to click over to find some more great book ideas!

Well, I'm off to enjoy this beautiful day!  

Happy Sunday, no school Monday, friends!