by Alyssa Charles
The average class shoe size is one of my favorite lessons. It teaches the importance of the regulation of units used for measurement. If everyone used their own shoe to measure, you would get many different lengths for the same distance. Each student had a different role in this lesson. Some students walked across a paper line to see how long it was in terms of their shoe size and others stood toe to heel so that we could find the average shoe size. We counted the steps and shoes on the line in French since Meline, a student visiting from France, was with us. After the length of 8 shoes were found we folded the paper line in halves, quarters, and finally eighths. Seeing halves, fourths, and eighths was a good introduction to the measuring practice they would do the following day in their journals. We also talk about average later in the year. Students chose objects in the classroom and estimated how many class shoe sizes long the objects were. It’s hard to believe the first class that I did this lesson with is now walking around on a college campus! The students loved comparing the shoe sizes from year to year.
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