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Lesson Plan
Making Measurements for Line Plots
In this hands-on lesson, your students will get to sharpen their measuring skills as they measure lengths of items in your classroom to the nearest quarter inch. They'll get to then use their data to create line plots.
Grade
Subject
View aligned standards
Learning Objectives
Students will be able to measure lengths of items to the nearest quarter-inch and use that data to create line plots.
The adjustment to the whole group lesson is a modification to differentiate for children who are English learners.
Introduction
(8 minutes)
- Ask students to brainstorm different types of measurements and tools used for measuring.
- Call on students to share their thinking. For example, clocks measure time in minutes and seconds, meter sticks measure meters and centimeters, and scales can measure pounds and ounces.
- Explain that when measuring you can estimate or round to a larger unit or you can be more precise. Have five students hold up their hands and quickly measure them to the nearest whole inch. Allow a few students to share their measurements.
- Ask students to think about something they could measure where being precise is less important and an example where being precise is extremely important. For example, measuring the weight of a bag of potatoes when making potato salad verses measuring the amount of medicine to give a sick baby.
- Tell students that today they are going to practice being more precise when measuring length. Instead of measuring to the nearest inch, they are going to measure to the nearest half or quarter inch.
Beginning
- Encourage students to discuss their ideas in their home language (L1) or English. Allow them to draw sketches to support their explanations.
- Provide sentence stems to support discussion. For example, "A type of measurement is ________" and "A tool for measurement is ________."
Intermediate
- Explain the word precise with a student-friendly definition and an image. Provide examples of instances when precision is important in both students' L1 and English.
- Provide sentence stems to support student explanations, such as "It is important to be precise when ________, but it is less important to be precise when _______."