How can we tap into students' existing knowledge of measurement to help them see it's more familiar than they might think? How can we set students up for success in a unit that often gets squeezed into a packed curriculum? By giving students a sneak peek of the upcoming unit and intentionally introducing key ideas or concepts ahead of time, I was helping students build a foundation, making upcoming learning more accessible.
Preexposure of Measurement Content
Preexposure subtly introduces students to upcoming content before actual instruction begins. This was a simple yet effective way for me to activate my students' prior knowledge. I would create an interactive bulletin board about measurement a week or so before our unit began. I would...
1. Pose questions like Would Your Rather? Would you rather carry a backpack that weighs 8 pounds or a backpack that weighs 8 kilograms?
2. Post quick measurement challenges. Locate an object that is longer than a foot. Find an object that weighs about 1 pound.
3. Post fun Did You Know Facts about measurement. Did you know that the United States is one of only a few countries that does not use the metric system as its main system of measurement? Did you know that mass and weight are not the same? If you were on the moon, your mass would be the same, but your weight would be less than hear on Earth! On Earth, they are both relatively the same.
Since measurement gets squeezed into an already packed curriculum, preexposure was a way to get students thinking about measurement in the background while wrapping up other content.
Measurement Sort
When I introduced measurement, I primed learning by activating my students' prior knowledge to get them thinking about the two systems of measurement: customary and metric. This also meant guiding them in distinguishing between the units for measuring length, capacity, and mass.
A measurement sort helped my students make sense of the two systems and how units relate to length, capacity, and mass. They cut apart the word slips and sorted them. Using this as a preassessment gave me a clearer picture of what my students already knew about measurement. It also helped them activate and connect to prior learning about measurement.
You can grab this freebie here if you want to try this Measurement Sort with your students.
Brain Dump
Another way I primed students' brains before an upcoming measurement unit was by having my students complete a brain dump where they wrote down everything they knew about measurement in 3-5 minutes. This could include units, tools, real-life connections, and conversions. I then had students pair up and share their brain dumps, adding anything new or interesting they heard in a different color and correcting any misconceptions they might have had. As a class, we would have a follow-up discussion. This short activity helped students metacognitively reflect on what they already knew, activating prior knowledge so they could better connect it to new learning.
