Sunrise and Shine: Measurement... the length kind

For this unit, our students are learning all about measurement. Prior to me, most of my students exposure to measurement revolved around "non-standard" types of measurement. Here is the most recent anchor chart I have created for my classroom to help keep students fresh on the terms.

I have learned from 5 years of teaching this unit that my kiddos struggle with the customary and metric system. To help them out, we first start with the easiest one... customary. After hunting for items that are about inch, foot or yard and recording them on the flowchart below, each student got to create their own inch ruler, foot ruler and yard ruler. This was simply done by cutting 1 inch strips of paper for the inch ruler, 12 inch strips for the foot rulers and 3 additional 12 inch strips for students to put together to create a yard ruler. Basically, I start with the inch ruler. Students draw a line from one side of the inch paper to the other and mark a 0 and a 1 on the line. Next, they fold the paper in half, open it and draw a line where our paper has been halfed. Since we have already talked about fractions, the kids have a easy time understanding why that line is called 1/2 line. I repeat this with the foot ruler. Students use their completed inch ruler to mark off 12 inches and the 1/2 inches between each inch. Then we discuss and label why each 1/2 inch has a whole number in front of it (eg- it is called 2 1/2 because it is the half way mark between 2 and 3). Lastly, students put 3 foot rulers together to make a yard. We label each foot (3 feet total), and how many inches are in a yard. Because we have learned to multiply kids have an easy time telling me that 12x3=36 inches. To conclude the unit, students learn the customary song with kinesthetic movements.

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Next, we move to the metric lesson. Again, students find things that are roughly a millimeter, centimeter, decimeter, meter and kilometer big and record it on their flowchart. The following day, students are placed in groups fo 3-4 to create their very own meter monster. Below are the directions I created as well as some of the meter monsters. Materials needed: pencils, coloring tools, large pieces of white butcher paper, meter sticks.