What’s the Big Idea? Making Math Connections

Written by Donna Boucher

Donna has been a teacher, math instructional coach, interventionist, and curriculum coordinator. A frequent speaker at state and national conferences, she shares her love for math with a worldwide audience through her website, Math Coach’s Corner. Donna is also the co-author of Guided Math Workshop.

As we enter the last 6-weeks of school (really?!), both Kinder and 1st Grade are teaching measurement.  Both grade levels need to cover objectives including length, capacity, weight/mass, and temperature.  I absolutely love the approach they are taking!  Instead of diving into length, for instance, they started their unit with an overview of measurement.  Why do we measure?  What kinds of attributes can we measure?

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In the book Small Steps, Big Changes the authors talk about something they call knowledge packages.  The concept is one introduced by Lipping Ma.  Basically, knowledge packages combine discrete objectives (length, capacity, etc.) into interconnected units (measurement).  What our K and 1 teachers are doing is really aligned with that type of thinking.

Measurement Anchor Chart–Making Connections

 

One of my favorite 1st grade friends working hard at math workstations.  You can find the activity he’s working on at my TpT store.

1 Comment

  1. Sandra

    Love the anchor charts. I am also working on measurement in my first grade classroom. We are growing sea creatures from Dollar Tree and documenting the change in weight and length. The kids love it. I have posted on my blog about it. I will add the newest pictures tomorrow.
    Sandra
    Classroom Companion

    Reply

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