One response to “2. Ideas to Share”

1. Jacquie Pisauro Says: June 17th, 2006 at 9:08 am

   During 25 years of teaching 7th- and 8th-grade math and science, measurement was always one of my favorite topics. I used to integrate a unit into both my seventh grade math and science classes at the beginning of the year and concentrated primarily on metric measurement. Obviously, this topic lends itself to hands-on activities and that seems to be what kids are often lacking. I also introduced or reviewed basic fraction and decimal concepts while teaching the measurement unit, thus giving real-life meaning and strengthening intuition about these number concepts. The two topics mesh very well.

   Even in 7th grade, when measuring lengths, I first had students measure using plastic centimeter cubes (or inch cubes), to develop the innate sense of “centimeter”. Later, when developing the notion of area and appropriate units, they would again use the cubes to estimate the surface area of small objects. To develop the sense of a square decimeter, students outlined one on centimeter grid paper and cut these out. Then they traced this template multiple times on newspaper and cut these out. Working together, they used their square decimeters to estimate the area of flat surfaces in the classroom. In the next activity, students used metersticks and masking tape to construct square meters from newspapers. Then they laid out the square decimeters on top of the square meter to verify that 1 sq. meter = 100 sq. decimeters. Next the whole class laid out all of their square meters on the floor of the classroom or a hallway to estimate the area of the room. (This part usually had to be done in stages, since there weren’t enough to cover the whole room at one time.)

   To teach the concept of metric volume, students built their own cubic decimeters (also 1 liter). They cut out six square decimeters from cm-grid paper and glued these on a large piece of construction paper in the shape of a cube net. This was cut out, folded, and taped into a cube, leaving one side open. Then they worked together to stack 1000 centimeter cubes in the cubic decimeter. This works better with a paper model than a plastic model, since the sides are more flexible. I also offered extra credit to a few students to make cubic meters out of cardboard (at home). When they brought these in, we took all of our cubic decimeters and laid them in the bottom of the cubic meter in rows of ten to give the suggestion that it would take 1000 to fill the subic meter. With two or three cubic meters, student could visualize the meaning of the volume of the classroom as how many of these boxes would it take to fill the room, end to end and stacked up, etc. Some years, we also made square feet and built cubic feet boxes, filling them with wooden cubic inches. We also dropped varying amounts of plastic cubic centimeters in water in graduated cylinders to verify that 1cu cm = 1 mL. Through these activities, students not only learned various measurement equivalencies, but also developed a strong sense of the meaning of measuring length, area, volume, and capacity.

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