Early Levels

Hi everyone!

Today I would like to start talking about how it can be introducing the concept of measuring in early levels; but without teaching/using any standard units of measurement.

Well, many authors said that  young learners have to face and learn too many concepts, as well as understand their applicability to the reality. So it could be beneficial and more suitable to introduce a kind of measurement sense through comparisons, where they have just to say if one object is bigger than the other. Hence, it would be a brilliant idea to use games where they have to explore and learn by themselves. For instance, I have found a really interesting post, (https://www.icanteachmychild.com/measuring-with-dinosaur-feet/) where it is suggested to do it but creating a context. In this way students would be more motivated in order to take part in the activity development.

It is supposed that kids have to compare a dinosaur track to his/her foot, without any standard units of measure. We have to ask them about the size of both; which is bigger, … In addition, they will have to measure it using their foot.

Once they have an understanding of the basic concept of measurement, then we can introduce them to standard units of measure.

Another way to introduce it is regarded in this video; here you can see how the teacher introduces through comparaisons the concept.

To sum up, it is necessary to give a significant introduction of these new concepts to learners, in this way we can avoid future problems or misunderstandings about them.