Today, P1-4 worked in different groups to help them understand why measurement is needed in every day life and why we need to use proper measuring tools to make sure measurements are accurate.
Mrs Henry asked the class to measure the length of a table using anything they wanted! Some chose pencils, dinosaurs, scissors etc. When she asked how long the table was, everyone had different answers. The children began to explore why this was – because the pencils were all different sizes. There were also gaps in the dinosaur models too so it was very difficult to say what the length was.
We then went in to the hall and the children were asked to measure the width of the hall using strides. They again had all different answers. Ava Lily and Abbi discovered that this was because all the children had different lengths of legs so their ‘strides’ were different, giving different measurements!
This showed that some sort of standard tool was needed to measure accurately. Mrs Henry showed them lots of measuring tools and they discussed what they were used for. There is now a ‘Measure Investigation Station’ in the classroom for the pupils to explore.