Lesson
1st Grade Math - Developing Student Understanding of Non-Standard and Standard Measurement
Clip 15/17: Measurement Lesson Part E3
Overview
Tracy Sola reconvenes the whole group of first-grade students, and shares three different strategies she observed students using. Tracy asks the students, “How are these strategies different, and what does that mean for accuracy in measurement? Turn to your partner and tell your partner how they're different.”
Teacher Commentary
Teacher Commentary
What I was really looking for there was to see if they could use iterative measurement. Having only one cube, they couldn't make the cube train, which would have been easy; they had to either use the cube multiple times, or create some other method.
And we saw several things happen. We saw that two students did that. They took their cube and they tried to be very precise; they drew a line at the bottom where the giraffe started, they would place a cube, draw a line at What I was really looking for there was to see if they could use iterative measurement. Having only one cube, they couldn't make the cube train, which would have been easy; they had to either use the cube multiple times, or create some other method.
And we saw several things happen. We saw that two students did that. They took their cube and they tried to be very precise; they drew a line at the bottom where the giraffe started, they would place a cube, draw a line at the top of that cube, and they kept doing that and doing that. And they were very precise.
Students have a lot of really big ideas and a lot of really important ideas, and a lot of things they could do that they couldn't articulate too. Not just say, but do. One pair was iterating the cubes very precisely. Another pair was iterating cube, pencil, cube, pencil, cube, pencil, and they were doing that because it made sense to them, but they didn't have any of the language to explain their thinking.