Who is the tallest?

Every June I wish I had measured everyone’s height in September so we can see how much everyone has physically grown. Every September I forget. But not this year!

On the third day of school, we started talking about measuring things. Grade 2 is the first year students use standard units of measurement instead of investigating things like “how many markers tall are you?” I know the grade 1 teacher was working on this in May and June, so measurement seems like a good place for us to start. It’s a quick thing we can work on after spending some time each day setting up Number Talk routines.

It was really interesting to note that the grade 3 students in the class aren’t necessarily the tallest, and the tallest grade 2 is not the oldest grade 2.

After measuring our height, we brainstormed other things we can measure and compare – who has the longest feet, the biggest hands, longest hair, and biggest eyebrows? We don’t have answers to these questions yet, but we will by mid-week.

Changes in season make interesting times to measure temperature too. I’ve got my thermometer ready to go, and we’ll be tracking the temperature each day as we move from “It’s so hot we shouldn’t be keeping schools open” to “Sorry I was late. I had to scrape ice off my windshield.”

Grade 3 students study plants in science, and this is a great opportunity to integrate math into science, or science into math if you prefer. We’ll be planting some plants for our windowsill soon, and measuring their growth.

Most exciting of all is that when the final days of this year arrive, we’ll have both the skills and the data to determine exactly how many centimetres taller everyone has grown.