In the fall, my kindergarten collaborator and I did a heights unit with her students and with my 6th graders. She covered the standard that directly compares 2 objects with a measureable attribute (K.MD.2) while I covered my standard on inequalities. Both Mrs. Z and I thought it went extremely well. It really contextualized the math standards.
But our unit and planning didn’t stop there.
May—
Because of all the stress and pressure of testing in May, I wanted to keep my afternoons less stressful, but engaging. During math time, Mrs. Z and I set up another week of exploration with heights, but this time we made sure to hit different standards and design different activities. Kinder was going to use the heights of themselves and a buddy to figure out the difference between the two measurements. My students were going to convert the measurements into feet and inches. (6.RP.3d Use ratio reasoning to convert measurement units; manipulate and transform units appropriately when multiplying or dividing quantities)
Day 1 – We introduced both groups to a 3 Act lesson we called “Tallest Teacher.” We combined both our classes so that we could deliver the lesson only once. Plus we wanted to see if the buddies would help each other out. They also discovered that my partner likes to cheat.
Lots of notice and wonder as seen here….
Act 2 consisted of a little bit of information…
Act 3 was this grand finale. Yes—Mrs. A is ginormous.
Here is some pics of the student work from kinder. Don’t have pictures of 6th grade work, but I can report that half my class did exceedingly well…except they don’t know how to convert a remainder into part of a foot.
Day 2 – Now it was time to trace our bodies. Giggles and laughter was heard throughout the hour. Mrs Z. and I could be seen running back and forth between both our classrooms making sure everyone was ok and not being stepped on.
This took some prep work on our part. Gathering over 50 pieces of bulletin board paper was not an easy feat.
Day 3/4 – It’s measurement time. Unlike the last time, students were only allowed to use unifix cubes. We combined each color into units of 10 to make counting easier. Ironically, my 6th grade students didn’t catch onto this as I caught a few counting each individual cube.
Final Thoughts…
- My 6th grade students love that we do things differently. I’m not the textbook kind of teacher (and neither is Mrs. Z). We like when we can make the standards come to life.
- Again…this has the potential to be noisy and disturb other teachers. However the learning is amazing. The engagement is incredible. Stick with your gut and go for it!
- Using cubes as a measurement was pretty cool, but my students had a difficult time converting them into inches. I had to spoon feed it to them a bit.
- Here’s a copy of tallest teacher
Until next time…
Kristen