The Queen of Measurement

Today I got to wear my tiara.  Yes, I keep a tiara in my filing cabinet.  I even put it on once in a while ... you know, to remind myself I'm the Queen of my classroom.

Well, today I had a purpose for wearing my tiara.  Today, I was the Queen of Measurement.  We started our new measurement unit on Monday.  Monday I had them make Frayer models using "measurement" as the term to define.  I had the students working in groups of three to create the models, then we posted them and I had each group explain their model.  Tuesday, they were investigating linear measurement by choosing 10 items in the classroom to measure.  They then had to convert the measurements into mm, cm, dm, m, and km.

Today was the day to teach the metric staircase.  I was looking for new ideas online last night, and I found a fabulous lesson called "Make it Metric".  This lesson uses the mnemonic devide:  "King Henry Does Usually Drink Chocolate Milk" to help the students remember the metric prefixes.  So, I donned my tiara, and became Queen Henry (afterall, isn't it the queen who comes up with all the great ideas???).  We read a short story about King Henry (included on the site above).  We discussed the metric staircase, and students created their own copies in their math notebooks.  Tomorrow we will make a foldable of the staircase.  The students will also have a short quiz where they will label the staircase.  We will then move on to the other ideas included in the lesson ... and I'll get to wear my tiara again!!!  

Happy Wednesday!  

I'll leave you with a picture of my youngest and me after school.  She goes to daycare at my school.  When I picked her up at the end of the day (still wearing my tiara), she insisted that she needed one, too.  Thank goodness for the kindergarten teacher and her birthday crowns.  Problem solved!