More Pumpkin Measurement

After our pumpkin exploration last week, we came back together to discuss our results and analyze the tools and measurements we got.  My goal was to give students some space to process the experiences they had with measurement and go deeper with some key measurement concepts.

Reflect on our Measuring Pumpkins Activity

My goal was to have students reflect on the learning they had done during the pumpkin measurement activity and come to some generalizations about math tools and measurement units, specifically inches and centimeters.

Set Up the Reflection Task

During our pumpkin exploration, I photographed each pumpkin with student names next to it (they’re blurred out).  I printed the photo and taped it to the original data sheet.

I then gave students an additional data sheet that included some sentence frames about which tool they chose to use (rule or measuring tape), why they chose that tool, and a question about why there are more centimeters than inches.  

Why use sentence frames? 

Many of my students are English learners or come from homes without a lot of academic language in the home.  Providing students with sentence frames takes away the pressure of constructing academic sentences and helps them focus on the math concepts.  

You can read more about how I use sentence frames in math in this blog post. 

Generalizations in Math

Helping students discover math generalizations is a great teaching practice.  Students can easily be told the generalizations, but if they can experience it and come to the conclusion themselves, it’s much more powerful.  I tend to use math generalizations with numbers more than measurement tasks, but the process can be used in any area. 

I wanted students to come up with two generalizations: some tools are better or easier to measure with than others (and why) and the same length will have more centimeters than inches. 

How did students do on the measurement reflection task?

Some students did an excellent job expressing their thinking with the use of the sentence frames.  Even with the use of the frames, some students still couldn’t articulate why there were more centimeters than inches.  

They just did not get that the unit size of a centimeter is smaller.  That tells me we need more experience with measuring!

Show Off Student Work

I taped the new recording sheet to the previous work so that we could see the progression of learning between the two days.

I love how students now have to explain their thinking, but it is so hard for my English learners to find the vocabulary.  The sentence structure isn’t even as big of a deal as the vocabulary, I’ve discovered.

It’s difficult for them to develop the concepts at the same time as developing the language needed to explain their thinking about the concepts.

More Measurement Activities

Since I knew that students needed more practice measure meaningful real-world objects, we moved into even more measurement activities. 

We measured our feet and hands!  Find out about the Measurement Activity – Measuring Feet and Hands in the blog post. 

Free Pumpkin Measurement Resoruces

Would you like a copy of the resources I used in my classroom for the Pumpkin Measurement Activity?  Click below. 

How do you help your students express themselves and develop their academic language in content areas? It’s a challenge and I’d love to hear more about how you do it in your classroom in the comments below!