Something to think about if teaching a unit on measurement.
Objectives:
To engage with units of measurement and orders of magnitude, by presenting a variety of records and measurements from events at the Olympic Games. Some will be familiar to students, others may lend themselves to estimation or a little research.
Task 1:
“Here are some interesting measurements and records from events at the Olympic Games. Unfortunately they have been muddled up. Can you regroup them correctly?” (hand out cards)
Impressive-athletics-world-records/
Guiding questions
Which quantities are likely to be whole numbers? Why?
Which quantities are lengths? Which are times? Which are speeds? Which are masses?
Which units might belong with the lengths… times… speeds… masses…?
Can you rank the different lengths… times… speeds… masses in order of magnitude?
Finish by bringing the whole class together to agree on a class ordering for the cards. Students will need to convince each other of their own ordering by explaining what they are certain of, and justifying their educated guesses.
The videos of impressive world record performances available on this site might be of interest to students. (Link is to an external site, NRICH is not responsible for the contents.)
maladorset 