Have you ever been fishing? If you have, you know that there are certain rules about the fish that you can catch and keep. For example, you can't keep a baby fish. You can tell if a fish is a baby or a grown-up fish by measuring how long it is. When a fish is long enough to keep it's called a "keeper".
Before we started measuring fish, we read a story about a girl called Kim. She had been fishing and caught a perch. She was trying to measure the fish with inch tiles to see if it was long enough to keep. The problem was that she kept getting different measurements. The first time Kim measured the fish, she found that it was 6 tiles long. The second time she measured it, she found that it was 8 tiles long. The third time she measured it, she found that it was 5 tiles long. The fourth time she measured it, she found that it was 4 tiles long. Every time she tried to check her measurements she got a different answer! We tried to help Kim figure out what she was doing wrong.
Before we started measuring fish, we read a story about a girl called Kim. She had been fishing and caught a perch. She was trying to measure the fish with inch tiles to see if it was long enough to keep. The problem was that she kept getting different measurements. The first time Kim measured the fish, she found that it was 6 tiles long. The second time she measured it, she found that it was 8 tiles long. The third time she measured it, she found that it was 5 tiles long. The fourth time she measured it, she found that it was 4 tiles long. Every time she tried to check her measurements she got a different answer! We tried to help Kim figure out what she was doing wrong.
1st Attempt: 6 tiles long
- "She didn't start measuring at the beginning of the fish. She should have started at the mouth."
- "She missed a part of the fish."
2nd Attempt: 8 tiles long
- "The squares aren't next to each other."
- "It's all wiggly and waggly."
- "The tiles aren't in a straight line."
3rd Attempt: 5 tiles long
- "The tiles go a bit over the tail."
- "She used them like a diamond, not a square."
4th Attempt: 4 tiles long
- "There are big spaces between the tiles."
- "She started before the mouth instead of right at it."
- "The tiles should all be lined up beside each other."
We then tried to measure Kim's fish ourselves. Even we got some different answers! Using photographs of our measurements on the ipad, we compared our strategies. We decided on some important measuring techniques that can help us to always get an accurate answer:
- Start measuring at the very beginning of the thing you're measuring.
- Don't let your tiles (or other measuring tool) go past the end of the object.
- Whatever you're using to measure needs to be right next to each other in a straight line. No spaces, no wiggly bits.
Finally, we measured some of our own fish to decide if they were keepers or not.