converting liquid measurements activities

By seeing that ideas used in measuring length are useful in measuring liquid volume, students begin to understand that these ideas can be generalized to all types of measurement.

$converting liquid measurements activities$

This idea of having a “common” unit eventually leads students to understand why having standard units is important it allows people in different locations to communicate measurements. Another idea students need to understand is that measurements must have the same unit in order to compare them. If you are converting a measurement into a larger unit, the number should be less, and vice versa. Making this understanding explicit will help students later on when they must convert measurements between different units. If you measure a given quantity, measuring with a smaller unit will yield a larger number of units than measuring with a larger unit. The first important idea is the inverse relationship between the size of a unit and the number of units. These ideas are not specific to measuring liquid volume, and students have, ideally, discussed these ideas already discussed when learning to measure length. There are a couple of important ideas students can develop while measuring with non-standard units.

Reproduced with permission from Tokyo Shoseki publishing company, Japan. We can figure out how many little cups the liquid from each container can fill up and compare the two amounts. What can we do if we cannot find two identical containers that are large enough to hold the entire content of the original two containers? For example, what if we only have one small cup? To help us measure our original containers, we can use the cup as a non-standard unit. Stage 3: Measuring Liquid Volume with Non-Standard Units This indirect comparison approach then leads to the third stage of measurement: measuring with a non-standard unit. Teachers can also address this misconception during the direct comparison stage by helping students realize that a taller container does not always hold more liquid than a shorter one. Teachers may directly address this misconception by, for example, having students pour out the same amount of liquid into two different containers. This is something that teachers need to keep in mind. We know that many young children judge the amount of liquid in a container based on its level (height of liquid) without paying attention to other dimensions of the container. Importantly, the size of the two containers that receive the content of the original two containers must be identical to make a judgement. By looking at the height of the liquid in the two containers, we can decide which container had more liquid. One way to indirectly compare the capacities of two containers is to fill up both containers and pour their content into two identical containers. Stage 2: Indirect Comparison of Liquid Volumes If all of the water from the first container can be poured into the second container without completely filling it, then the second container holds more water.

If it overflows, the first container is bigger, or is able to hold more water. One way to directly compare the capacity of two containers is to fill up one container and transfer that amount of water into the other. Stage 1: Direct Comparison of Liquid Volumes Below, we discuss experiences that can help students move through these stages. length, weight, etc), students benefit from progressing through the four stages of measurement with liquid volume. Just as with all measurement attributes (e.g. The Four Stages of Measurement with Liquid Volume

Converting liquid measurements activities