Habits of Mind:

• develop an appreciation of the usefulness of measurement in our daily lives

• appreciate the importance of organizing information on graphs and charts
  

Procedure:

1. Students will look at various objects and predict how long they are using standard units of measurement (homemade tape). Graph information

2. Students will look at assigned objects and measure the objects for accuracy using the Graphers software program by Sunburst Communications.
   

Essential Questions:

• Which one of these objects do you think is the longest? The shortest?

• What is the actual length of your object?

• What is the difference between your predictions and your object?

• In what profession would one need to be able to estimate lengths of objects?

• What are some things that you measure in your life? Why do you measure them?

• How would the world look if we weren't able to measure objects?
  

Management of One Computer:

• Have students work in groups of 2-4 and enter their information as a group or as an entire class on predicting and placing correct length of object.

Materials:

• Graphers, by Sunburst Communications
  

Extension Activities:

1. Communicate with other elementary schools in these regions and have students pose different objects to measure to specific grades/class -
   
   Web66: International School Web Site Registry: listing of all schools with a registered web site.
   
   Elementary Schools in New York: listing of all elementary schools, secondary schools, educational organizations, and resources in New York State who have registered with the Web66 site.

2. Use the Internet to gather images of famous landmarks to help discuss the importance of measurement as well as shortest versus longest.