Content area
Full Text
"Would you come to my class and read Measuring Penny for the introduction to our measurement unit?" asked Jill Metzger, a fifth-grade teacher at Westwood Elementary School in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
I was delighted to accept this invitation. The elementary education faculty at Oklahoma State University had been working closely with Westwood for the past several years. English is a second language for almost one-third of the students in that school; their parents are international students at OSU. We knew from standardized test results that measurement was an area of concern at the school and had offered assistance in curriculum development. The faculty followed guidelines from Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM 2000) and Oklahoma's Priority Academic Student Skills (2000) in developing lessons for improving the understanding of measurement. The Measurement Standard for grades 3-5 states that students should
* understand such attributes as length, area, weight, volume, and size of angle and select the appropriate type of unit for measuring each attribute;
* understand the need for measuring with standard units and become familiar with standard units in the customary and metric systems; and
* understand that measurements are approximations and understand how differences in units affect precision. (NCTM 2000, p. 170)
The students needed more experiences in planning and doing measurements; they needed practice in estimating a reasonable answer and checking the result against that estimate; and they needed to build confidence in comparing nonstandard to standard measurements. To introduce the unit, Measuring Penny stimulated the children's thinking about measurement, provided a beginning assessment for the teacher of what the students knew and understood about measurement, and pinpointed areas in which the students needed additional practice and knowledge.
Measuring Penny, written and illustrated by Loreen Leedy, links literature and mathematics in an appealing and meaningful way. The book tells about Lisa's experiences as she completes her homework assignment on measurement. Lisa's teacher encourages the class to "Use your imagination!" Lisa decides to measure her dog, Penny. After school, Lisa and Penny go to the park to meet her friends and their dogs. At the park, they make many interesting measurements and comparisons, using standard and nonstandard units. Lisa completes the assignment at home, adding monetary measurements to her report.
After getting approval...