Counting and measuring length

Wow! I haven't written a blog for ages. I bet you wondered where I was, that is, if there is indeed anyone out there reading this haha.

I am really pleased with how I have changed the planning for Years 1 and 2. I particularly like the big idea. I have always wanted my lessons to link together as a sequence of lessons, so that children start to build upon what they knew at the start. When I was teaching Years 3 and 4, the big idea was always place value and partitioning. However, after reading the work of Mike Askew, I changed my focus onto counting. He shows how we only really need a place value system when we are counting.

Last week, I was getting children to apply what they knew about counting to measuring length. I was using the following book:

I laminated different snails, giving each one a name so I didn't have to number them. Each snail had a slimy trail which I wanted the children to compare, estimate and measure.

I decided to leave the estimating to the following day because how can they estimate with no experience?

Year 1 counted how many interlocking cubes each trail was and they used the number tracks. Then they ordered them and we talked about long & short, longer & shorter and also longest & shortest.

Year 2 used dienes. I was really chuffed with this idea because it bridges beautifully between counting and grouping in tens and ones, and measuring in centimetres with rulers. I felt the ruler was just too abstract to start with.

The following day, we measured the length of webs made by different spiders. I enjoyed making up their names!