MATH in
How the World Works
MEASUREMENT
Young children are inherent measurers and this is reflected strongly in everyday language when they compare, order and match. Personal experiences,
such as playing with toys, interactions with other children, conversations with parents, all reinforce children’s early development of the concept of attributes that can be measured. Teaching about each of the measurement attributes for objects (such as length, area, volume, capacity, mass, angle, temperature) and for events (such as time and chance) can be represented in terms of three broad phases:
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Identifying the attributes
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Learening to measure (skills)
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Learning to calculate
Provocation:
I ask student to explore different kinds of scale and discuss about the function, and anything they know about those stuff. I provide kitchen scale, bathroom scale, postman scale and metric tape. Then they share their findings from the exploration to the other group.
Take a note about what they have found
They found that there are different measuring tools and unit that appropriate to use for different things.
What happens in my classroom?
Students watch brainpopjr about g and kg then have a discussion about the movie to lead them into the concept of non-standard and standard measurement. They might review what they have known about measurement, such as distance, weight, length, height, volume ect, and what type of unit and appropriate measurement tools they use to measure those things.
To let the students expereiencing eith the tools, and learning by doing, i aks them to measure different thing such as lighter and heavier stuff. By letting them do such things, they might come up with some more inquiry; which things are appropriate to be measured using certain measuring tools and units. They also need to review how to compare them.
To start another day, i also ask them to sing.
Do the same activities to explore more in measurring
distance
length
width
height.
Based on student's inquiry, I provide a websites to get to know or answer their inquiry about certain concept;
mass weight
volume capacity.
http://www.msnucleus.org/membership/html/k6/as/scimath/3/assm3_6a.html
At the end of the lesson, students might write a conclusion of what they have learnt on their book and ask them to share their conclusion, so their friends can add on to their book.
What might support the learning?
To engage students who still need more tiem to understand the concept of mass, weight, volume and capacity, I provide them more hands on activities. Today, i prepared some materials and equipment to support the activities, such as different kinds of bottle, i mean in different size, and some materials such as powder and liquids. I also provide more video about that. Watch the video of mine to see clearly how i do it.
Converting
To start the concept of converting, students are reminded about the previous discussion. It is about the column they have made when they measure the length of some objects. They provide column for other units. I show the table again on smartboard. They remember that measuring things can be in different units. Then I give a ruler to each of them, so they can observe that in between 0 to 1 cm, there is tiny stripe that is refer to mm. The discussion lead them into enduring understanding that 1 cm = 10 mm
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Watch movie about conversion, and have a discussion about conversion skills on smartboard.
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Do worksheet and solve the problem together, and ask them to measure 5 things in cm and convert them into mm.
Show them a ruler (each of them hold 1) and observe the numbers and stripe there which represent 1 mm)--> so they come up with 1cm=10 mm.
Converting CM to M
I teach the concept of converting part by part. It is easier for them to make meaning and understand it easily.
After the converting from CM to MM, the CM to M.
I show them measuring tape and I give sign on 100CM, becasue 100 cm is equal to 1 m. Then i ask them to measure length in meter using 100 cm, so they can do repeated addition or multiplication.
The other activities is to measure the length of 2 classroom by using 100 cm which means 1m. Each student stand on each hundred, so they can see that 17 students stands refer to 17 m, and equal to 1700cm.
MEASURING TIME
PROVOCATION:
Tell a story about my timeline in front of them. I draw the timeline and my one day schedule on smartboard. I ask them to match after all . From that activity, we discuss the related words dealing with those story, and ask them to make their own time line and schedule.
To know their prior-knowledge about time, i ask them to discuss with their peers about what they have known. Most of them can come up with the ideas such as 24 hours a day, am/pm, 1 minute=60 seconds ect. I can assume that they are not going to take longer time to review these things. GIven them Y-chart about What they see, How they use and What to do with clock is given to them individually as pre assessment task.
Show them some pictures about time and clock is good starter for them. They will enthusiasm to know more about time.
year decade seconds minutes millenium hours months weeks 3600 seconds days
WHAT HAPPENS IN THE CLASSROOM?
Students make sandwich and cook popcorn, as they can measure the weight of butter, sprinkle, volume of fruit juice and the time when the corn pop.
Students are also asked to conevert the time as well. Some students need more practise and more hands-on activity such using digital clock and timer.