Blog Post 3

The objective of this task was in preparation for my student interview.  The students were asked, “How can we use cubes to measure the length of the pen?” The objective of this task was measuring and that you can measure objects using different objects.  This is the first part of teaching students about measuring, so I was unsure of how well the students would do with this task. 

Some of my anticipated responses were that students would not realize that they needed to connect the blocks together.  I assumed that the students would just set the cubes down next to each other alongside the pen, to see how many cubes would be the same length as the pen.  This would obviously require fewer cubes, which would give students the wrong length.  I also anticipated that students would not know what “measure” is and what it would mean to measure the length of an object.

I started out by setting out the box of cubes on the table and I had the students tell me what these cubes could be used for.  Because the students had just used the cubes to make patterns, all three students said they can make patterns out of them.  I held up the pen, and asked the students if they knew what it meant to measure an object.  The first boy told me that measuring meant to see how long or short something would be.  The second student, a girl, told me that she was not sure what measuring meant.  So, together we came up with different words to use instead of measuring; such as, find how long ____, the length of ____, etc.  These different words helped her understand what was being asked of her.

Each of the students amazed me when they started working on the task.  The first student connected a few cubes at a time, and then laid them next to the pen.  He continued to do this until the length of the connected cubes was the same length as the pen. The second girl did the exact same procedure as the first boy.  The last boy connected ten cubes together while holding them in the air, above the table.  He then laid the ten cubes next to the pen and realized that that was too long.  So he took a cube off at a time, and laid it next to the pen.  He did this until he got down to six cubes and realized that it was the correct length.

One of the students asked, “Do these cubes equal one inch?  Does this mean the pen is six inches long?”

His response proved to me that he understood objects can be measured in different ways.  It would be helpful to introduce to students different methods of measurement and to see how well they would be able to connect the different methods together.