Student Work Post #3

The mathematical objective of this activity was to teach the students that measuring could be done with a lot of things. First the teacher explained that she was going to take her foot and measure the rug in the carpet area. She did this by walking one foot in front of the other. They counted with her.  She said, “Okay so this rug is about 7 of MY feet long.” She placed the emphasis on “MY” because she wanted the children to know that her foot length could be different from theirs or other people. She then traced her foot on a piece of paper, cut it out and measured something that was not on the ground, the closet door.

            Then she went into asking the children, “what are other ways in which we could measure?” Some children responded with, “ our head”, she had to redirect the class because many of the children found that funny. Other children said, “ arm” or “hand”. These were the answers that the teacher was looking for.  The teacher showed how her task was designed to elicit student thinking by asking the open-ended question of, “What are other ways you can measure?”  After the lesson, she had the children trace and cut out their own foot and then measure. During her lesson, she stressed the importance of how to measure using something other then a ruler. She talked about finger placement and how you have to move your finger after you have measured out one foot, and then you go to the second foot, etc.

            Though I think the strategy that my mentor teacher used to teach this was very well thought out and nicely executed, there are two other possible strategies to help teach the concept of measuring with other objects other then a ruler. One idea is to measure the childrens’ height by paper teddy bears. Each bear could be 5 inches, and then the children get measured with the bears and then they can be placed on the wall. This could be done at the beginning of the year and then again at the end of the year. Another strategy could be to measure distance by having a car race. There could be different size ramps and the cars could go down them and then the children could mark with tape how far their car went.

            An anticipated problem with the measuring with the feet task is that the student might not be lining up the cut out of their foot with their finger and then moving in up to measure the next part, this would require a lot of adult support. Another anticipated student response could be that the student wants to measure a table by going around the table in a circle instead of measuring it straight across, this would also require adult support to help them know that we measure straight across with that specific type of measuring device, (a foot).  

            The students approached the problem by first cutting out their foot and then just explored the classroom, measuring different things. I feel this math task was more of an exploration piece rather then solving a task.

            The students’ approach to the task says that they can identify that you can measure which other objects, however some struggled with the idea of using your finger to mark your spot and then move up to continue to measure, they kept moving their finger and losing their spot. (This is more of an issue with hand-eye coordination).

            Two ways of extending this task could be to try to use a different part of their body or I could be to apply numbers/units to their certain part of their body that they were trying to measure with.