Measuring To Compare Inches And Centimeters

My second graders love to measure anything, but when they have to compare measuring in inches to measuring in centimeters, then it can become complicated for them.  To help my kiddos out, I created a measure to compare series of activities to learn that an inch has a longer unit of measurement than a centimeter which is why you have a higher number of centimeters than inches when measuring.  When working with measurement always refer to inches and centimeters as units of measurements and discuss on the ruler how 1 inch is a larger unit of measurement than 1 centimeter.  Think of body benchmarks by comparing the width of your pinky nail (about 1 centimeter) compared to your second knuckle on your pointer finger (about 1 inch).



For the first activity, I have my students choose 1 unit of measurement, either in inches or centimeters, and measure two objects on a task card and find the difference between the two measurements.  Sometimes students need guidance on what the difference in measurement is.  For my second graders, the difference is how much longer or shorter one object is compared to another. For this activity, I have 24 different measurement task cards to use, so that my students have a wide variety of items to choose from.  When I use this activity in a small group, I do not always use the recording sheet but rather differentiate for different students.

 The next activity that I have my students do to practice measuring and recording data is to measure objects around the room.  You can use the cards as a measure around the room activity where the cards are placed around the room at different places, or you can have students to measure designated objects around the classroom in various stations. I either have students create a line plot for measurement or a bar graph.  I usually have them create a line plot because in North Carolina and with common core students need to be able to measure objects to create a line plot.

My third activity is where my kids play a center activity, after small group instruction, where they use a game board and the first set of measuring task cards.  To play the game, each student draws a card and measures the two objects on the card in either inches or centimeters.  The player that has the greatest measurement gets to move 1 space on the game board.

 

Lastly, I work with students in small groups measuring objects first in inches and then in centimeters discussing why when you measure you have two different measurements for inches and centimeters.  We discuss how an inch has a larger unit of measurement than centimeters, so you have more centimeters than inches when you measure.  To end my comparing measurements mini-unit, I have students play a measurement word problem game where they have to draw a card that shows an object and tells how one person had a measurement in centimeters and another person measured the same object in inches.  The player who draws the card has to use some higher thinking skills to determine whether one of them is correct, neither is correct, or both are correct and justify their reasoning with a partner before they can move 1 spot.  Talk about a higher level thinking skill activity! My kids love it and often want to create their own measurement game using measurement comparison word problems.

Check out my Measure To Compare and other measurement activities in my tpt store!

Sight Word Graphing

Last week I introduced a new sight word activity that I created with some of my students. Second graders often take of in reading, but still struggle with sight words.  Let's face it . . . You just have to memorize sight words.  I remember being little and my mom flashing sight words to me.  I learned my sight words but it was boring.  If you are a struggling reader and struggle with sight words, it makes it even harder to learn your sight words.

Last weekend I made sight word graphing for my kiddos.  They loved it! As a matter of fact, they begged to have sight word graphing for homework that night.  Here's how I did it with my kids.


I have two different versions of sight word graphing.  In one version, students simply find the words and then color in boxes to graph.  This is an acceptable practice, but research actually says that if students cannot write or spell the word correctly, then they do not really know the sight word.

This week I had my kids find each word by reading it out loud, write the word on the graph over the appropriate header, and touch and read the word again.  Students then colored the boxes of the graph in to see how many of each sight word they found! They loved it!

Go by my store to get my sight word graphing bundle from levels pre-primer to 3rd grade!