When I was a kid, I remember wanting to be helpful. It didn’t matter if it was in the garage, the kitchen, the family room, outside, or elsewhere; I really enjoyed helping with tasks. While I would like to think that it was something inherent, further reflection leads me to believe it had a lot to do with empowerment. From an early age, my parents and extended family wouldn’t have me complete menial tasks. Instead, they involved me directly with the creation/destruction/modification of whatever we were working on at the time.
As a way of closing out this mini-series on ways in which parents of middle school students can support and foster their love of learning mathematics, I wanted to bring it back to how involved the children are in the creative process.
One of the glaring foundational weaknesses of middle-and high-school students is number sense. This is a broad topic with many subsets, and a big one of them is measurement.
What is the least number of measuring cups you would need to measure out 1 2/3 cups of flour? How about 3 3/4? Could you measure out 2 11/12 cups? If so, how? If not, why not?
For many of our children/students, they will grow up to join a workforce that uses a tool used for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years: a ruler. While the units have changed over time, the need for linear measurement has not. Even with that knowledge, many of our students are unprepared for a life ahead of them that is filled with measurements and the precision that it demands.
How wide is this cutting board, assuming that the other side is on the opposite edge? How precise can you get? Can you estimate a more exact measurement?
Whether it is building a fort, designing new clothing, modifying furniture, or repairing something around the house, the ability to understand and make use of measurement is crucial to the success of a project. This skill is also something that will help your child(ren) perform better in the middle school math classroom, realizing that the majority of work done in the middle grades involve units of measure and students need to use their knowledge of reasonableness to reach a conclusion.
If you are looking for specific places to go for resources that can help spark these conversations, I recommend going to between2numbers.com, built by Fawn Nguyen, and samedifferentimages.wordpress.com, built by Brian Bushart. The example below, from Between 2 Numbers, is a great way to spark a conversation with context around measurement:
No, students aren’t being asked to measure anything specifically, but it is asking us as learners to consider measurement and reasonableness of an hour. Think about this; which would you choose as the best option?
For me, assuming that I can ride my bike consistently, I could probably average 10 miles per hour, meaning I can go about 240 miles in the given time. A Bugatti, without looking up how fast it goes, can certainly cover 150 miles per hour. Therefore, my guess would be 1.5 hours. After looking up the research on average bicycle speeds and the top speed of a Veyron, I can get more precise with my solution, but having the general knowledge of measurement is a big first step to consider which option might be better and how mathematics can support it.
If there is one takeaway from this series of four posts, my hope is that you feel empowered as parents to have more math-based conversations with your children, no matter their age. For the teachers taking the time to read this, I would encourage us all to think critically about the work we assign to go home and how we can make it more likely that our parent group feels like they can contribute their own perspectives. In each of the posts, I have offered up ideas, prompts, and resources that all parents can access and talk about.
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Thank you for bringing math to the table.
John Stevens
Father of Conversation-Worthy kids