I found the readings from last week and this week to be very helpful because I do not see measurement in my field placement. One of the readings that I thought was the most helpful was "Navigating Through Measurement". While it states that students really focus and gain understanding of measurement in upper elementary and middle school grades, students in lower elementary still begin to learn the basics. I really thought the idea of teaching young students both standard and non standard units of measurement was a great idea. I think students need to first understand what measurement is and what it entails and they can do this by using blocks and paperclips to show that things can be measured using a wide variety of UNITS, units being the key word here. But I also think it is important to teach them that there are standard units of measure like pounds and inches so that they can see how it will benefit them to learn this in the real world.
With this, I think the article "Big Ideas" does a good job of explaining why measurement is important and what students may think is the importance of measurement. The dialogue between Carl, Juanita, Joan, and Lee explains this well and definitely gave me some good ideas about how to incorporate measurement into my own classroom in the future (comparing things). I think it would really get students engaged if I started a measurement lesson by having them comparing their height or even sometime simple like shoe size and then opening that up into a more formal lesson. This would get them thinking about the idea behind measurement and may help them understand more complex ideas when they arise.
