Every student can use the practice with measuring! This is a great activity to start the school year with.
I have 2 ways to do this using anchor charts.
Easy Prep:
- Print the 5 anchor charts (large - 4 pieces of 8 1/2 x 11 paper) and hang around the room.
- Have students rotate around the room and read how to use each tool
- Give students a list of measurements and ask them what it measures and the tool they would need to use
- 14 g (mass/triple beam balance)
- 34.5 cm (length/ruler)
- 22° C (temperature/thermometer)
- 5 N (weight/spring scale)
- 50 mL (volume/graduated cylinder)
Hands on Practice
- Print the 5 anchor charts (small - 1 8 1/2 x11 piece of paper or medium - 2 pieces of paper) and put them at lab stations
- Set out the tool (ruler, triple beam balance, thermometer, spring scale & graduated cylinder) at each station that the chart explains
- Put objects to measure at each station
- Graduated Cylinder Station - Graduated cylinders with colored water
- Thermometer Station - Containers of ice water, warm water and room temperature water
- Spring Scale Station - Different sized bolts (put wire loop around the top of the bolt so they will hang from the scale)
- Triple Beam Balance Station - Objects such as toy cars, blocks, dice etc.
- Ruler Station - Different lengths of string taped to the lab table
- Ask students to use the tool according the directions on the chart.
- Have students rotate around each station - I use a lab sheet like this:
Assessment: Ask students to write a short explanation on how to measure length, mass, weight, temperature, and volume including the tool and units.
Differentiated: Give students a list of tools. Have them walk around and look at the poster to find what each measures.
- triple beam balance (mass)
- ruler (length)
- thermometer (temperature)
- spring scale (weight)
- graduated cylinder (volume)
Give students the word find with a word bank.
- measure, tool, unit, length, ruler, centimeter, meter, mass, triple beam balance, grams, weight, spring scale, Newton, temperature, thermometer, Celsius, volume, graduated cylinder, Liter, milliliter
Use a sentence stem for students to fill in.
- Length measures ________ The tool used to measure length is ______. The units are ____.
- Mass measures ________ The tool used to measure mass is ______. The units are ____.
- Temperature measures ________ The tool used to measure temperature is ______. The units are ____.
- Weight measures ________ The tool used to measure weight is ______. The units are ____.
- Volume measures ________ The tool used to measure volume is ______. The units are ____.
Advanced: Give students a word find with no word bank. The 20 words in the word find can be found on the posters. Optional: offer a prize to the student that finds the words first!
