We need answers to get answers

"We need answers to get answers," a student reflected, as he shared his 3-2-1 after out lesson on measurement. I was thrilled. He often blurts out replies that are not connected with anything in particular.

If was a very powerful lesson I picked up from G. Fletchy's website. The students were engaged and everyone participated with enthusiasm.

I wanted the students to understand the following:

We can :

use different tools to measure things.
connect certain measurements with our body parts to make good estimates or get an idea of "howmuchness" of measurement units. (10 cm spans the the outer edge of my right eye to the outer edge of my left eye.)
chunk objects - visually break up an objects into parts.

Lesson starter:

A 3-Act lesson with this picture:

Question: What is the difference in height of the children?

What do you notice?

What questions do you have?

Then I showed the next picture for 5 seconds.

Followed by this one: (5 seconds)

Questions/wonderings generated from the students:

How many cubes could there be?
I think there might be 5. ( I show them the picture for another 5 seconds)....no there are 10!

Me: Can you guess how many cubes there are now?

64 and 53!

Me: How did you count so quickly?

Students shared their counting strategies:

I counted the colours and multiplied by 10.
Then I spent more time focusing on the top part which was not in tens.

The next day, we worked on the following task and reflection.

Task Unifix cubes

Sample students responses-

Reflection

Sample student reflection:

Comments

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