Week 8 – What is measurement?

Part 1 –
The big idea from week 8’s lecture and tutorial include what is measurement?
Step 1 – Identify the attribute (Concept).
- Making sure that children know what they are measuring.
o Eg: What is volume?
o What is an angle?
o What is area?
Step 2 – Choose an appropriate unit of measurement fro the attribute being measured.
- Arbitrary units are taught first.
o Hand spans, feet, blocks, length and string.
- Standardised units are then taught.
o Rulers that display centimetres and metres, protractors that display degrees.
Having the different types of measurement is a good way to start out when learning
measurement.

Part 2 –
The concept covered within measurement is length and understanding what it means. Length
uses all four parts of the mathematics language model.
- Children language – long, wide, tall, short.
- Materials language – blocks, links, hands.
- Mathematical language – centimetre, metre, centimetre cubed.
- Symbolic language – m, cm, km, mm.

Part 3 –
A common misconception that children can have when measuring length is not knowing how
to measure using a ruler, or not understanding how measurement works. Why do we need to
measure?
This may occur as students need to have prior knowledge of numbers and what they mean.

Part 4 –
Using units of measurement
Measure and compare the lengths and capacities of pairs of objects using uniform informal
units (ACMMG019 - Scootle )

Elaboration- Understanding that in order to compare objects, the unit of measurement must be
the same size.

http://education.abc.net.au/home#!/media/173004/measuring-familiar-things
This scootle application talks about measuring familiar things, the students are able to make
comparisons between their favourite things.

Part 5 –
An appropriate teaching resource for measurement is giving the students a measuring tape
and asking them to walk around the classroom to find something to measure. This will help
them develop the concept of length.
Week 8 – What is measurement?

Part 6 –
1. The concept of length is measurement that provides application to every day life.
Measurement is a process in which a number is given to an object. Measurement is
also known as length, Capacity, weight/mass, area, volume, time, temperature and
angle (Reys, R., Et El, 2012).
2. Using units of measurement
Measure and compare the lengths and capacities of pairs of objects using uniform
informal units (ACMMG019 - Scootle )
3. This teaching strategy helps the children to understand the concept of measuring
length.

Measuring the length of a box is an easy way for the students to understand as it is a common
shape/ box.

Reference:
Reys, R., Lindquist, M., Lambdin, D., Smith, N., Rogers, A., Falle, J., Frid, S., & Bennett, S.
(2012). Helping children learn Mathematics (2nd Australian ed.).
Milton: John Wiley & Sons.