Measurement Olympics!

To start our measurement unit I wanted to do something fun that got everyone moving and really thinking about how we can measure items and what role estimating plays. I googled measurement Olympics and printed off a package to get me on my way. I used one published in 1987 by AIMS Education Foundation. There were seven or eight events but I went with five. Event one was the sponge squeeze, students had to pull a sponge out of a bucket of water and squeeze in to another, they estimate how much water, then measure. It was definitely the messiest station!

The next station we did was called the marble grab BUT I could not find marbles so it became a station with linking cubes. For each station one studnt on a team of four or five did the event while others assisted with recording and estimating. The student grabbed a handful of cubes and placed them in one side of a balance, them students estimated how much they thought the cubes weighed. They added weights until they balanced out.

The next station was the foot measuring station, students had one student trace a foot on centimetre grid paper, they had to estimate how much area the foot covered, then calculate.

The next station was the javelin, students stood behind a taped line and threw the javelin (coloured straws). They had to estimate how far they thought it travelled and then measure, this station was cool because I saw many strategies for estimating and calculating. Some were asking for metre sticks, some were using the length of their foot as a benchmark and others were eyeballing it before measuring.

Last was the discus and again many strategies were being used, students had to throw a paper plate and estimate and then calculate.

After each group had finished each station we had a discussion about what was the easiest to estimate and measure, which stations did they feel like they had a good grasp of the units of measurement and which did note we talked about some conclusions and insights we discovered. I thought it was a good way to keep a busy group with cabin fever engaged and I can now relate lessons we are doing back to our Olympics. Up next I saw on someone else's blog a surface area and volume activity using Lego so I hope to try that! Have a great rest of the week!

Kathleen:)