[Introduction music. An image with the title: Lesson Plans Mathematics. Level 1, Informal measurement].

Measurement involves comparison between objects and units of measure and is an essential life skill.

This sequence focuses on helping students develop an understanding of the informal measurement of the attribute's length, mass, and capacity.

[Images of a ruler, scales and a measuring cup appear on the left side of the screen].

Students will work towards fluency in their use of appropriate and relevant language. They’ll be immersed in engaging hands-on opportunities to estimate and check measurements and will participate in learning experiences that teach them to rank and order familiar objects, using both indirect and direct comparison. What's more is that these experiences are highly interactive and collaborative.

This sequence values learning as a social process, where students can make conjectures, test them out, and then explain them in a social context with their peers. At the core of all learning experiences are opportunities to develop the big ideas of measurement.

Whilst the sequence highlights the importance of uniform informal units, it also engages in opportunities to develop iteration, origin and end point number assignment, partial units, tiling and transitivity of measurement.

[The words ‘Informal units’, ‘Iteration’, ‘Origin and endpoint’, ‘Number assignment’, ‘Partial units’, ‘Tiling’, and ‘Transitivity’ appear on the screen].

These lessons provide students with a balance between exploring their understanding and addressing misconceptions such as leaving gaps or overlaps when measuring length.

Furthermore, the consolidation of learning through the use of supporting resources provides opportunities for students to ask questions and demonstrate their understanding.

Students will be challenged to develop estimations of length, mass and capacity. People use estimation almost every day. Here, the challenge lies in being able to use visual information to connect to comparisons of measurement.

[A photograph of flour, eggs and a hand pouring from a measuring spoon appears on the screen].

Often, children have limited lived experiences and benefit from learning about measuring by actually doing the measuring themselves.

[An image of a child with building blocks and other toys appears on the screen].

Familiarising themselves with the unit being used for measurement is essential for students to experience success.

Try this out. How many unifix blocks long is this table?

[An image of a table with a unifix block on top of it appears on the left side of the screen].

You might want some clues. Well, a unifix block standing up like this is about the width of your thumb.

[The speaker points to their thumb. A red unifix block appears on the left side of the screen].

Does that help? The width of the table in unifix blocks is 40.

[An image of the table appears with unifix blocks spread evenly across its length].

You have now been provided with a benchmark to support your estimation. The only way to tell for sure is to measure it yourself. This would support your measurement sense and your ability to estimate accurately in the future.

If you need closure, the table is 81 unifix blocks long. Students need to select the same size unit to measure with.

[An image of a child with a tower of blocks and a toy giraffe appears on the left side of the screen].

Teachers need to be conscious of the unit’s orientation as well as exact size when providing opportunities for checking estimations. For example, in Lesson 4, children are given an opportunity to choose items with which to measure mass.

[An image of a collection of different-sized and coloured blocks appear on the screen this is followed by an image of blue-coloured blocks appearing on the screen].

They need to ensure that their chosen items are exactly the same size.

We call these uniform informal units or identical units. Here we need to explicitly teach the importance of measuring with identical units in order to communicate to others what the measurement is, or even to record it for ourselves.

[An image of a ship, sky and water appears. The ship has a measuring scale flag. Above the ship is written: ‘Ari the Pirate and the Quest for Gold’].

Two key supporting resources provide context for measuring length, mass, and capacity, while highlighting the importance of selecting uniform informal units when measuring.

[An image of a table with the title: ‘Measuring length, mass and capacity with informal units’. Under the title are columns with images of a fire truck, a scale and a container].

This sequence is full of rich learning experiences and provides opportunities to develop essential lifelong skills.

[Ending music. The Education State, the Victoria State Government and the Department of Education logos appear across the screen.]

[An image of the Victoria State Government logo appears.  Underneath is written ‘Authorised by the Victorian Government, Melbourne. State of Victoria (Department of Education), 2024’].

[End of transcript.]