Standard 1: Measure the length of objects and solve problems involving measurement.

General Information
Number: MA.4.M.1
Title: Measure the length of objects and solve problems involving measurement.
Type: Standard
Subject: Mathematics (B.E.S.T.)
Grade: 4
Strand: Measurement

Related Benchmarks

This cluster includes the following benchmarks.

Related Access Points

This cluster includes the following access points.

Access Points

MA.4.M.1.AP.1a
Select and use appropriate tools to measure length (i.e., inches, feet, yards), liquid volume (i.e., gallons, quarts, pints, cups) and temperature (i.e., degrees Fahrenheit).
MA.4.M.1.AP.1b
Explore selecting and using appropriate tools to measure weight (i.e., ounces, pounds).
MA.4.M.1.AP.2a
Explore relative sizes of measurement units within one system of units including yards, feet, inches; pounds, ounces; gallons, quarts, pints, cups; and hours, minutes.
MA.4.M.1.AP.2b
Using a conversion sheet, convert from a larger to a smaller unit within a single system of measurement using the units: yards, feet, inches; pounds, ounces; gallons, quarts, pints, cups; and hours, minutes. Only whole number measurements may be used.

Related Resources

Vetted resources educators can use to teach the concepts and skills in this topic.

Formative Assessments

Kesha and Juan:

Students are asked to solve a multi-step word problem that requires converting metric length units.

Type: Formative Assessment

Shopping List:

Students are asked to convert units of measure given with fractions and decimals using linear models.

Type: Formative Assessment

Converting Units of Time:

Students complete two tables by converting units of time from hours to minutes and minutes to seconds

Type: Formative Assessment

Conversions in the Metric System Part Two:

Students complete two tables by converting kilometers to meters and liters to milliliters.

Type: Formative Assessment

Conversions in the Metric System:

Students are asked to complete two tables by converting meters to centimeters and kilograms to grams.

Type: Formative Assessment

Conversions in the Customary System:

Students complete two tables by converting from feet to inches and pounds to ounces.

Type: Formative Assessment

Lesson Plans

Motion for Speed:

Students will investigate the relationships between the initial speed of a car and the distance required for it to stop.  Students will record their results onto a student guide to determine how a car moving faster or slower affects its ability to stop.  Finally, students will investigate why we have different speed limits on different roads in this integrated lesson plan.

Type: Lesson Plan

The Great Sneaker Design Challenge:

The practice of science is collaborative and exciting. This lesson engages students as a STEM team working collaboratively to provide a company with the best sneaker design.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

Free Flight in Return for your Ranking!:

In this Model Eliciting Activity, MEA, students will rank four promotional deals that a travel agency is running. Before they make their decision, the students must find the discounted price by multiplying a whole number by a fraction and convert the duration of the trip to the same unit.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

Park Planning:

Students are asked to plan a playground for a new park within a given budget and area limit. They will analyze the best use of playground equipment using a data table of area requirements and cost. Students will convert units within a single measurement system, calculate the area of a rectangle, and perform addition/subtraction calculations involving money using decimal notation.

Type: Lesson Plan

Let's Think in Small Units:

In this lesson students will make and complete tables to express larger unit measurements in terms of a smaller unit within one system of units. They will use the chart to make comparisons and explain their reasoning.

Type: Lesson Plan

Tennis Lessons:

This MEA asks students to take on the job of a tennis pro and decide which factors are most important in choosing a facility to take tennis lessons. Students will perform math calculations, create a two-column table for hours and minutes, develop a procedure to rank facilities, and provide written feedback through letters to a parent whose child needs group tennis lessons and writes letters to ask for advice. They will rank their choices from "best to worst" tennis lesson facilities. Students will provide a detailed written explanation for how they decided to rank factors and their solution for rating tennis lesson facilities.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

Walk This Way:

Students will be asked to rank the different floor tiles for the playrooms in activity centers throughout community parks. They will need to take certain factors into consideration when making their rankings. They will also need to calculate the costs of installing the floor tiles using the given measurement of the playroom and the floor tiles. The "twist" will be that the client now needs to include a storage room for some of the playroom's equipment. They will need to decide if to use the same floor tile or different from the playroom and the additional cost of the storage closet. After, they will add the total costs of the playroom and the storage closet. They will report their findings and reasons by writing letters to the client.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

Wondrous Water Parks:

This activity requires students to apply their knowledge of unit conversions, speed calculation, and comparing fractions to solve the problem of which water park their class should choose to go on for their 5th grade class trip.

Type: Lesson Plan

Fish Ahoy Fish:

Students will work in groups to assist a client in purchasing different fish for a fish pond. From a data table, they will need to decide which type of fish and how many fish to purchase according to the size of the each pond. After, they will need to revisit a revised data table to make different selection of fish and calculate costs for the purchase of the fish.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem, while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought process. MEAs follow a problem-based, student centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEA’s visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx

Type: Lesson Plan

Measure Up! Measuring to make a line plot.:

In this lesson, students will generate measurement data by measuring lengths using rulers and show the data by making a line plot.

Type: Lesson Plan

Give An Inch, Take A Foot:

In this activity students practice measuring techniques by measuring different objects and distances around the classroom. They practice using different scales of measurement in metric units and estimation.

Type: Lesson Plan

On the Hunt for Measurements: Estimation, Area and Perimeter of Rectangles:

Students look for rectangular objects in the classroom or on the school campus that match the measurements for given clues. Students will estimate the measurements of the object, then take the exact measurements and use this information to determine its area and perimeter.

Type: Lesson Plan

Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) STEM Lesson

Physical Science Unit: Water Beach Vacation Lesson 9 Cool Cooler Design Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA):

In this MEA, students will have the opportunity to apply what they learned about describing
the changes water undergoes when it changes state through heating and cooling. Students
will be asked to rank coolers based on data to solve an open-ended, realistic problem, while
considering constraints and tradeoffs. In the optional twist, students will need to take the
mass of the cooler into account.

This is a lesson in the Grade 3 Physical Science Unit on Water. This is a themed unit ofSaM-1's adventures while on a Beach Vacation.  To see all the lessons in the unit please visit https://www.cpalms.org/page818.aspx.

 

Type: Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) STEM Lesson

Original Student Tutorials

Game On Part Two: Measuring Distance with Customary Units:

Learn to convert a larger customary measurement unit into equivalent smaller units, including converting miles to yards and feet in this sports-themed interactive tutorial.

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Click HERE to open Part 1: Measuring Length with Customary Units.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Game On Part One: Measuring Length with Customary Units:

Learn to convert a larger customary measurement unit into equivalent smaller units, including converting yards to feet and inches, in this sports-themed interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Timmy's Trouble with Taffy:

Learn to estimate and measure the masses of objects in grams and kilograms in this interactive tutorial with an animal hospital theme.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Perspectives Video: Teaching Idea

Using Manipulatives to Create Stem and Leaf Plots:

Unlock an effective teaching strategy for teaching stem and leaf plots in this Teacher Perspectives video for educators.

Type: Perspectives Video: Teaching Idea

Professional Development

What Does It Mean To Measure?:

This is a professional development session from the Learning Math series from Annenberg. Learners will begin to explore the questions "What can be measured?" and "What does it mean to measure something?" Learners identify measurable properties of objects such as weight, surface area, and volume, and discuss which metric units are appropriate for measuring these properties. Learners will also learn that measurement is, by its nature, approximate. Finally, learners will consider how to make measurements using nonstandard units. This session features a number of problems for learners to solve and open-ended questions to discuss, videos that demonstrate measurement techniques, and an interactive activity that asks learners to construct shapes using different size triangles to foster understanding of area and perimeter. There are also nine homework problems in which learners are asked to generate different measurements, graph measurements, and evaluate the appropriateness of the measurements generated using a data chart. Many of the professional development activities can be used directly in the classroom.

Type: Professional Development

Teaching Idea

Ball Bounce Experiment:

Students investigate different balls' abilities to bounce and represent the data they collect graphically.

Type: Teaching Idea

Tutorials

Metric System: Units of Volume:

This Khan Academy tutorial video illustrates the conversion equivalence of liters, milliliters, and kiloliters.

Type: Tutorial

Unit Conversion: Ordering Metric Distances Example:

This Khan Academy tutorial video demonstrates a strategy for ordering four different-sized metric length units.

Type: Tutorial

Time Word Problem: When to Leave to Get Home on Time:

In this Khan Academy tutorial video Chris is told to be home by 6:15. You know the number of minutes it takes him to get home. What time should he leave?

Type: Tutorial

U.S. Customary Units: Distance:

This Khan Academy tutorial video presents conventional examples that use specific customary units

Type: Tutorial

How to convert kilograms to milligrams and tons to ounces:

In this tutorial video from Khan Academy, explore the differences and similarities involved when converting between measurements in the metric and customary systems.

Type: Tutorial

How to convert gallons to quarts, quarts to pints, pints to cups, and cups to ounces:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore converting between gallons, quarts, pints, cups, and fluid ounces.

Type: Tutorial

How to convert kilometers to meters and meters centimeters:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore conversion within metric units of length, such as: kilometers, meters and centimeters.

Type: Tutorial

How to convert hours to minutes and minutes to seconds:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore conversion of units of time between hours, minutes and seconds.

Type: Tutorial

U.S. customary units: fluid volume:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore U.S. customary units of fluid volume (teaspoon, tablespoon, fluid ounce, cup, pint, quart, and gallon).

Type: Tutorial

U.S. customary units: weight:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore pounds, ounces and tons.

Type: Tutorial

Video/Audio/Animation

Soybean growth rate response to touch:

A time-lapse video showing differential growth rates for touch-treated seedlings and control seedlings. This would be appropriate for lessons about plant growth responses to environmental stress and graphing growth rate. Plants were grown in a vermiculite soilless medium with calcium-enhanced water. No other minerals or nutrients were used. Plants were grown in a dark room with specially-filtered green light. The plants did not grow by cellular reproduction but only by expansion of existing cells in the hypocotyl region below the 'hook'.
Video contains three plants in total. The first two plants to emerge from the vermiculite medium are the control (right) and treatment (left) plants. A third plant emerges in front of these two but is removed at the time of treatment and is not relevant except to help indicate when treatment was applied (watch for when it disappears). When that plant disappears, the slowed growth rate of the treatment plant is apparent.
Treatment included a gentle flexing of the hypocotyl region of the treatment seedling for approximately 5 seconds. A rubber glove was used at this time to avoid an contamination of the plant tissue.
Some video players allow users to 'scrub' the playback back and forth. This would help teachers or students isolate particular times (as indicated by the watch) and particular measurements (as indicated by the cm scale). A graph could be constructed by first creating a data table and then plotting the data points from the table. Multiple measurements from the video could be taken to create an accurate graph of the plants' growth rates (treatment vs control).
Instructions for graphing usage:
The scale in the video is in centimeters (one cm increments). Students could observe the initial time on the watch in the video and use that observation to represent time (t) = 0. For that value, a mark could be made to indicate the height of the seedlings. As they advance and pause the video repeatedly, the students would mark the time (+2.5 hours for example) and mark the related seedling heights. It is not necessary to advance the video at any regular interval but is necessary to mark the time and related heights as accurately as possible. Students may use different time values and would thus have different data sets but should find that their graphs are very similar. (Good opportunity to collect data from real research and create their own data sets) It is advised that the students collect multiple data points around the time where the seedling growth slows in response to touch to more accurately collect information around that growth rate slowing event. The resulting graph should have an initial growth rate slope, a flatter slope after stress treatment, and a return to approximately the same slope as seen pre-treatment. More data points should yield a more thorough view of this. This would be a good point to discuss. Students can use some of their data points to calculate approximate pre-treatment, immediate post-treatment, and late post-treatment slopes for both the control and treatment seedlings.
This video was created by the submitter and is original content.
Full screen playback should be an option for most video players. Video quality may appear degraded with a larger image but this may aid viewing the watch and scale for data collection.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

Student Resources

Vetted resources students can use to learn the concepts and skills in this topic.

Original Student Tutorials

Game On Part Two: Measuring Distance with Customary Units:

Learn to convert a larger customary measurement unit into equivalent smaller units, including converting miles to yards and feet in this sports-themed interactive tutorial.

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Click HERE to open Part 1: Measuring Length with Customary Units.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Game On Part One: Measuring Length with Customary Units:

Learn to convert a larger customary measurement unit into equivalent smaller units, including converting yards to feet and inches, in this sports-themed interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Timmy's Trouble with Taffy:

Learn to estimate and measure the masses of objects in grams and kilograms in this interactive tutorial with an animal hospital theme.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Tutorials

Metric System: Units of Volume:

This Khan Academy tutorial video illustrates the conversion equivalence of liters, milliliters, and kiloliters.

Type: Tutorial

Unit Conversion: Ordering Metric Distances Example:

This Khan Academy tutorial video demonstrates a strategy for ordering four different-sized metric length units.

Type: Tutorial

Time Word Problem: When to Leave to Get Home on Time:

In this Khan Academy tutorial video Chris is told to be home by 6:15. You know the number of minutes it takes him to get home. What time should he leave?

Type: Tutorial

U.S. Customary Units: Distance:

This Khan Academy tutorial video presents conventional examples that use specific customary units

Type: Tutorial

How to convert kilograms to milligrams and tons to ounces:

In this tutorial video from Khan Academy, explore the differences and similarities involved when converting between measurements in the metric and customary systems.

Type: Tutorial

How to convert gallons to quarts, quarts to pints, pints to cups, and cups to ounces:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore converting between gallons, quarts, pints, cups, and fluid ounces.

Type: Tutorial

How to convert kilometers to meters and meters centimeters:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore conversion within metric units of length, such as: kilometers, meters and centimeters.

Type: Tutorial

How to convert hours to minutes and minutes to seconds:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore conversion of units of time between hours, minutes and seconds.

Type: Tutorial

U.S. customary units: fluid volume:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore U.S. customary units of fluid volume (teaspoon, tablespoon, fluid ounce, cup, pint, quart, and gallon).

Type: Tutorial

U.S. customary units: weight:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore pounds, ounces and tons.

Type: Tutorial

Parent Resources

Vetted resources caregivers can use to help students learn the concepts and skills in this topic.

Tutorials

How to convert kilograms to milligrams and tons to ounces:

In this tutorial video from Khan Academy, explore the differences and similarities involved when converting between measurements in the metric and customary systems.

Type: Tutorial

How to convert gallons to quarts, quarts to pints, pints to cups, and cups to ounces:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore converting between gallons, quarts, pints, cups, and fluid ounces.

Type: Tutorial

How to convert kilometers to meters and meters centimeters:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore conversion within metric units of length, such as: kilometers, meters and centimeters.

Type: Tutorial

How to convert hours to minutes and minutes to seconds:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore conversion of units of time between hours, minutes and seconds.

Type: Tutorial

U.S. customary units: fluid volume:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore U.S. customary units of fluid volume (teaspoon, tablespoon, fluid ounce, cup, pint, quart, and gallon).

Type: Tutorial

U.S. customary units: weight:

In this video tutorial from Khan Academy, explore pounds, ounces and tons.

Type: Tutorial