Teaching Measurement, Our Weaknesses, and How to Enhance Our Skills through Integration
Measurement is one of the weakest areas in mathematics standardized testing in children in schools in the United States. Beyond just being a source of weakness for Untied States children it is also the content area which has the biggest disparity between Caucasian students and children of minorities. This is confirmed through the testing scores of NAEP and TIMISS. Many teachers cite the two systems of measurement in the United States for being a source of this weakness, as our students are unfamiliar with the metric system; however the actual source of these weaknesses seems to be deeper than this (Thompson & Preston, 2004).
Integrative lessons can be meaningful and beneficial for all content areas and can deepen the lessons learned in all of the areas that are infused together as well as make a lesson more connective to everyday life. Integrative lesson plans are one of the greatest tools that teachers can use to enhance the learning of students in many content areas instead of focusing on one single area. As was discussed in the reading “Is Math Politically Neutral” it is important to integrate other subjects into math, even in small ways, so that the children can be gaining the most from every lesson. (Felton 2010) In this article the discussion was based more on infusing social studies related content and current events with math by creating political and educational story problems. This is one way in which social studies knowledge can also be built in a primarily math lesson where the content learned in a similar problem, without the integration would strictly be math. Children are learning about more information in the same amount of time and therefore are building more knowledge with these deeper lessons.
With measurement it is simple and effective to integrate measurement with science related concepts, where children can use measurement to accurately collect data with different experiments (Thompson & Preston, 2004). This also makes the learning of measurement more realistic, as children are using it in a way that applies to actual everyday life situations.
The benefits of creating an integrative curriculum cannot be overlooked, as children can gain so much more information, and connect this information to their lives more easily, from an integrative lesson plan than a lesson plan more focused on a singular content area. By creating these lessons, teachers are building their students up for more success in life as children are more apt to learn effectively about living in the real world, when encountering more real world, everyday problems in an integrative manner in school.
As you mentioned right in the beginning of your post, measurement is something that is a universal difficulty for many children throughout the world (Thompson & Preston, 2004). Beyond that, measurement is needed most often in everyday life (Thompson & Preston, 2004). After reading both of those facts, I was really shocked at just how much attention measurement needs in the classroom. I then immediately asked myself how I could be a teacher in the future that doesn't allow her students to lead a life struggling with measurement. Some of the things that the article suggests is more hands-on activities, integrating measurement into other curriculum, try to connect measurement between math and science (rather than representing them differently), and being more aware of errors within measurement (Thompson & Preston, 2004). I like how you connected a previous article with this one about integrating different material into all parts of the curriculum. A few other articles I looked back at could also work well as reminders when helping students learn measurement. "The Value of Mistakes" by Eggleton & Moldavan talks about how allowing children to make mistakes and work them out on their own can be vital to learning. This ties in with measurement because students are encouraged to have more hands-on "experiences" and experiences include making errors and testing out information. Giving students the correct answer right away will not help them understand the process or what they did wrong. Going hand-in-hand with both articles is "Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say" by Reinhart. Once again, allowing children to have measurement experiences includes letting them work tasks out on their own without complete and constant verbal guidance. Letting a student come up with their own answer and pushing them for an explanation can help a student become familiar with measurement and beat the odds of having it as a "weakness".
ReplyDeleteI really liked the Thompson & Preston article because it made a lot of points about how much measurement is really used in daily life, yet has little emphasis in the classroom. Being a preschool teacher I know that kids have very little experience with measurement. When I went to teach it I used a lot of hands-on activities like the Thompson & Preston article suggested. We also did a variety of things with measurement--not just "one and done" which I think happens a lot in elementary schools which is why it is so overlooked. One way that I model measurement as a large group is I will model what TO do and what NOT to do. Eggleton and Moldavan would argue this is a valuable experience because then we can learn from our mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI think we can also teach measurement in integration with science because in science we do a lot of measurements without even realizing it. By integrating in other academics we are not only creating a variety of experiences but we are also allowing children to learn from multiple domains with meaning behind the measurement.
I am interested to learn more about ways that measurement is taught in the elementary schools and how it may differ from our experiences at the preschool. I think if children are exposed to measurement at an early age they are more likely to understand it and be interested in it as well. I think the most important part of teaching measurement will be making sure we are measuring for something meaningful and not just as practice.