Metric Measures in 4th Grade

April 17th, 2019

My 1st day of Service Learning.  The last two weeks they have been doing AZ Merit and today is their first day back to regular curriculum.  I am doing my Service Learning in Mrs. Bare's 4th grade class.  Her class walks in after specials and she is up writing on the white board and she turns around and says, "Warm Ups on the board!" I got the biggest smile and honestly learned to have a new appreciation for "Warm Ups"! I honestly never cared for Warm Ups or Exit Tickets because they make me have to rush and for some reason my brain tends to freeze when under pressure.  Time constraints cause major pressure for me but these kiddos in class handled it like champs, they scrambled about for a minute, sat down at their desks and had white boards and markers out in seconds ready to roll.

Warm Ups on Board in Service Learning Class

"What does the word Product mean?"  One students answers, "the sum of 2 numbers."  Teacher asks, "What do we do with the 372 and the 6?"  Another student says, "we add them."  "Are you sure?" Mrs. Bare asks.  Another students says, "We multiply them!" YES! She gives them all a few minutes and says,"White boards up!"  Now while most students did get it correct their were still a few that did not but these were students I observed not really paying attention and in their own world sort of to speak.  They then did the fractions problem and we started the daily lesson which was awesome!

The daily lesson was on measuring length and Mrs. Bare introduced Metric Measures to the class.  She started out by everyone making a help sheet so they will be able to do conversions on their own by referring to the sheet to help them.  I made my own at home to share with you.

Metric Conversions Chart Mrs. Bare did with 4th Graders (This one I made)

The students then made conversions that were written on the board.  

Examples:  4m = _____cm  You take the 4m and multiply them 100 and you get 400cm.

4m = _____dm  You take 4m and multiply by 10 and you get 40dm.

380m = _____hm  You divide 300m by 100 and you get 3hm.

_____mm = 12m  You multiply 1,000mm by 12m and you get 12,000mm.  The students first found the differences and figured out what was needing to be done to solve the problems.