Week 9 Reflection...Let's Learn About Measurement

Retrieved November 15th from: Mr.V's Three's!

This week I got to prepare a presentation for my class. Unfortunately, I was unable to present in front of the class, however I was sort of glad because instead, I presented in front of a smaller group of people so it took some of the intimidation factor away. I got the chance to see first hand what it was like to think of all the elements that need to be considered before presenting it to a class.

Measurement seems like such a complex unit, there are so many different branches of it. Our presentation this week for class (since class was online, lucky us, a Friday off!) talked about what is introduced to students at what age. Grade 3 consists of things as simple as using a ruler and beginning to understand how it works, reading time, recording the mass of objects and using those concepts to compare and order objects.

Grade 4 students start to measure length, introducing the idea of perimeter and the idea of area, time intervals, units of measurement (kg, L) and some more complex concepts. Grade 5 is where it really gets interesting, students will start using formulas to calculate perimeter and area of rectangles, they introduce temperature over time and start considering the volume and space of 3D shapes.


Retrieved November 15th 2016 from: via GIPHY

I won't continue to bore you with these fun facts, I just wanted to give you an idea of the integral introduction to the different elements. It might seem small to us, however when preparing a lesson, making sure you are incorporating all of those things can be quite the task. My presentation this week involved the measurement of area...I know right? where do we begin? It was very hard to come up with a starting point because, as an adult, I know how to measure area, L X W = Area...however students would not know that, miss Bunz stated in her presentation that we must not make assumptions about our students prior knowledge, take the time and go over things. After deciding to give the students the formula, I decided to have them put it into action. A suggestion was made to me that instead of providing the students with the formula, I should have tried to give them prompts to find it on their own, such as having them count the squares on grid paper and seeing if they can make the connection themselves before simply giving them to formula.

Doing this presentation was a huge learning opportunity for me, I need to start considering a mini lesson I will be teaching in my practicum, which will include teaching a twenty minute lesson to a group of about 6 children. How perfect that I got to dip my toes into something like this with my presentation this week? We were given the choice of doing a literacy lesson or a math lesson, who would have ever thought that I would pick math...? not me, that's for sure!

 
Retrieved November 16th from: via GIPHY