You know how there are some things you just don’t like to teach?
Oh, come on.Please don’t tell me, “Oh, no! I LooooooVe to teach EVERYthing! There is not one single thing I don’t just loooove!” Cause I don’t believe it. Everybody must have something. I can’t be the only one.
The thing I hate is measurement.
I hate it all. Length, capacity, and mass and weight. I don’t really know why I hate it. Maybe because it’s always toward the end of our sequence, right at the time I’m already behind in math and I have to teach double time to fit in the tested standards. This year was a little different in third grade. There were fewer tested standards, so I felt like I had a little more time, but it’s still not my favorite.
However, what all teachers know is you can’t let them know you hate it.
If they know,they hate it, too.
And it’s all over.
So what do we do?We fake it.
We walk in after lunching, singing, “I LOOOVE measurement! I LOOOVE it! Look, kids! See this stupid grin on my face?! Measure, measure, measure! Love, love, love! I looooovvvveeee it!”
And they’re little, so they believe us.
One thing that helps me looove stuff I hate to teach is by teaching it in superfun ways. I love songs. Songs, to me, are superfun. I think they help my more struggling students (and my more able students as well) remember concepts that can be abstract and untouchable.
So this is the song I used for length. You can grab it for free at TPT below. It’s only great if you do the gestures. I included those on the second page. But I left off one important part.I told my students that the song would only help them remember landmark units of length if they shook their bottoms during the third and fourth lines of the song. This is, of course, ridiculous, but it sure helped me feel better about teaching length. So basically, this is how the song went, to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. The black words are the song verses, and the red words are the gestures.
Centimeter, Meter, Kilometer
Centimeter – hold up pinkie
Meter – spread arms apart
Kilometer – mimic driving with a steering wheel
Inch, Foot, Yard, and Mile, Mile, Mile.
Inch – hold up thumb
Foot – point to floor tile
Yard – point to ceiling tile, or three floor tiles
Mile – minic driving with a steering wheel
We use units to measure length.
Shake bottom shake bottom shake bottom
Metric and customary too, too, too!
Shake bottom shake bottom shake bottom
It worked for me.You can grab it at TPT.Then we did our foldable. It’s a shutter-fold. On the outside kids recorded the customary and metric units to measure length. Inside are the abbreviations and student-drawn pictures of landmarks to remember the approximate length of the different units.
I cleaned it up and made a nice template as part of my Length Activity Pack at TPT, and at Teacher’s Notebook so grab that too!So tell me the truth. What do you hate?
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Love it!
Jennifer
First Grade Blue SKies
Love the foldable!
Elizabeth
Fun in Room 4B
I don't like teaching money to first graders!!! I put it off until now and it is still terrible. Boo!!!
Marvelous Multiagers!
I hate teaching elapsed time, fractions on a number line and combinations/permutations! Ugh, double ugh.
Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher
EWW Elapsed time is a good one!
I hate that, too.
Defin. summarizing. I hate summary. That's the ELA torture. Elapsed time in math. Gross. We're doing measurement connections right now…yep, triple beam balances, measuring cups, strings, cubes, all kinds of "fun" stuff…and it all revolves around…POPCORN! That's the disguise for the torture.
Well! Mostly…you and blowholes!
HAHAHAHA