First Grade Measurement

First grade builds on the foundation of early measurement skills to ensure that students will have future success as measuring skills become more complex. The metric system is important, but measuring objects with nonstandard units is important too.  Experiences using nonstandard units to measure length and width help children connect measurement with everyday objects. It prepares them for using standard measurement tools and units. In first grade we make sure that there are many experiences measuring with nonstandard units.  This is extremely important because these experiences will help students understand the sizes of things they encounter in the real world. They also anchor their thinking in understanding the steps and process needed to measure accurately.

 One of the activities we did using nonstandard measurements was tracing our bodies and using different objects (blocks, markers and erasers) to measure different parts of our bodies.  For example, how many markers long is the length of my leg?  First, each student had a partner trace their body on long paper.  Then, they made different lines on their traced body to measure length and width.  Once these lines were in place they chose which object they were going to use to measure.  They wrote that at the bottom of their paper: unit- block.  Then they began measuring.  It was very important for the first graders to learn that in order to get an accurate measurement they needed to make sure they used the same object, that they lined their object up one right after another or made a dot so they knew where to place the object as they continued measuring.  This lesson had us very busy and not only was it loads of fun, we learned a lot about the use of nonstandard measurement and how to work together with partners.      

Lessons that have a scaffold approach help students to develop an understanding of the concepts. With the next lesson, we learned about inches and centimeters. Then we took out our traced bodies and measured those same lines using inches and centimeters.  It was fascinating to look at the different measurements me made.  Now we can look at our data and discuss what we learned.