Kaitlyn Flint - Weekly Blog 2

The purpose of this math activity was for the students to use pennies given to them by the teacher as a nonstandard form of measurement and fill in how many pennies long or tall each image was. This meets the common core standard of K.MD.1 which is Describe and compare measurable attributes - Describe measurable attributes of objects, such as length or weight. Describe several measurable attributes of a single object. The big idea of this task is what is measurement? This allows students to use a different measurement tool then usual, so they can become aware that many things can be measuring tools. This elicits student thinking by making them aware of non standardized measurement tools - they may currently think that using rulers is the only form of measurement. 
Two effective ways that can be used to approach this problem would be to use different mediums rather then pennies to measure the length of the images. Another way would be to draw a line for the length of the image and line the pennies up on the line.
Two anticipated student approaches would be to cover the entire image with pennies which would give them the area of the entire inner section, rather then just the length. Another student approach would be that the student may do the opposite measurement of what the teacher had anticipated - such as using the height instead of the length of the image or vice versa. 
The steps taken by the student in this worksheet was:
1. The student took the pennies and lined them across the image from beginning to end. For example: for the cow the student lined the pennies from the tail to the nose of the cow.
2. The student then used one to one correspondence to count each individual penny. For example: The student counted each penny out loud, "1,2,3,4"
3. The student wrote down the number of pennies they counted. For example: The student wrote down the number 4.
Two hypothesis' of the student's thought processes that this student's work reveals that he is able to line up a material on an a given image. The student is also able to use one to one correspondence to count correctly.
Two different ways to advance the student's thinking is to give them different mediums to measure with and making their own image to measure with whatever medium they would like. This opens up the opportunity for them to decide what to measure and what to measure with. You can also add a "Explain how you were able to figure out how the measurement and what medium did you use and why?" This would let you know why they chose a specific medium and what their thinking is about measuring. This would work with this student because he was able to count and measure from end to end, so this would allow him to be open ended with measuring and experiment with various mediums.