A measurable city walk

As we have seen in the previous posts, measurement is present in our daily life and measurable items surround us everywhere. We have been talking about different resources and activities that we can apply with our students inside the classroom but, what about outside? Can we practise in other places being inside the classroom? Of course!

Nowadays, the huge development of technological resources allows us to discover and visit several places without moving from our home or our school. This time, we are going to learn about measurement in the city. The main objective is that our students learn from significant activities that they can practise outside the classroom when they walk around the city so that it has a meaningful and real purpose.  

We can work with measurement in the city at all levels of Primary Education, though the teacher has to be able to adapt the contents to each level and group. As an introductory activity for the oldest students, those who are in the fifth and sixth course, we can work with distances in traffic signals. There are lots of traffic signals in the city and the roads which express distances and we can ask our students for observing and taking pictures of them during a week, for instance. Then, they can bring the photos to the classroom and we can debate with the whole group about their meaning and usefulness. In this way, we will not just teach Maths, but also transversal contents of civic rules and road safety education.

Another relevant aspect that we can find and study in our cities is the high of different buildings. It could be interesting for the students to know the high of their building. However, we can make the class more cultural because we also want to teach Social Sciences, so we will focus on historical monuments and buildings. Showing several pictures and comparisons of the buildings’ high, we can see the tendency to build higher modern buildings. In this way, the historical buildings that we consider “high” are now smaller because of this tendency of building skyscrapers in our cities. In the same activity, we can also compare historical monuments from different cities and know their highs. 

Furthermore, the most interesting and enjoying activity for our students could be to calculate distances in the city using maps. For this activity, we will use Google Maps and we can start calculating the distance that each student goes in his/her way to school every day. We will also use the mode “street view” if students want to recreate their path in a real way. So, this tool allows us to discover any city or place that we want with real images. In this first research, students can compare the distances that they go using different units of measurement -may be the distance of a student is in meters and another one who goes by car is in kilometres-. The program also estimates the time that it is usually spent using different means of transport (foot, bike, public transport, car, etc.). Once we have calculated our first distance between the home and the school, we can do the same between cities, countries or continents. The aim is that they explore, discover and learn differently, trying to connect Maths, Geography and History subjects.

Comparing and estimating in class

In this post, we are going to address something which is essential to teach our youngest children, those who are going to learn how to measure soon. Before that, students of the first and second courses of Primary Education should learn to compare and estimate objects and lengths. This will help them in the future to understand and operate with measurement units.

First of all, our students need to acquire comparison concepts: what is longer, shorter, smaller, higher, etc. The best way to do it is through games because they create an enjoyable atmosphere in class and learning occurs without realising. Some simple and feasible games can be carried out in class just taking a wide variety of school materials. Divided into different groups, children will choose the object that the teacher asks for. For instance, the biggest rubber or the longest rule. It can be a kind of competition to make the game more exciting. In this way, our students will learn to distinguish between objects making different comparisons. Once it has been achieved, we can start to order all the objects by its size building several series. The following video can be used to introduce the children to this topic.

Once our learners can compare, it’s time to estimate sizes and measures. It can be done also with the same planning as in the first game. However, in this case, we will ask our groups of learners for different aspects and then, we will check them. If our learners are very young, we will start by asking them if something fits in a place. For example, if a chair fits into a student’s bag. If they have more knowledge about measurement, we can ask them for the length of several objects present in the classroom. For instance, the length of their desks or the window. The children can make the estimations in their minds using the metric system or the system that they want (if they can estimate using a pencil or another specific object). The aim is that their brains start to imagine and think about the issue of measurement. In this way, we are familiarizing their eyes with the concepts of space, distance and length. Finally, we can add this video to our explanation and games to help our learners to compare and estimate.