Math Blog #8 : Making Mention of Meaningful Measurement Materials

This week I was introduced to an AWESOME resource for teaching Measurement! Measurement Grades Four to Six. Wowie wow. I guess one of the great things about being a teacher candidate is that everything is new and exciting. Whenever I am introduced to a new resource or concept I immediately start thinking about how I could use it and with math in particular (in case my past blogs have not made this evident) I need all the help I can get.

My biggest worry is actually not how to get the students to understand math, its figuring it out on my own and feeling confident enough to teach it correctly. So when I am given a resource like Measurement Grades Four to Six I get very excited indeed. This document breaks Measurement down so well. I love the way this whole document is structured. The language is engaging and accessible and the learning goals are very clearly laid out. But my favourite part of this document is the section on Learning Activities. Each grade comes with two or three fun activities that help students build a conceptual understanding of measurement and apply it to real life. I am ten thousand percent going to use this document in the future. And I mean the very near future. I have already been creating questions for my placement class and I am definitely going to try to make use of this document!

My placement class is currently in the measurement unit and as I marked their math worksheets I could see patterns forming around what the students got right and what they got wrong. Many students could easily remember how to calculate the perimeter of any shape but would often make the mistake making their answer squared. My associate teacher said that many of the students didn't learn why area was expressed as a number squared, they just knew that they had to do it. And so some students were making their perimeters squared as well. So what my teacher does is what this resource strives to do, teach the students a conceptual understanding of the concepts they are learning so they can make logical decisions.