The Gist
- Ask your students to come to the front and order themselves on height.
- Then on age.
- Finally, ask them to order themselves on eye (or hair) color.
- They will experience the concept of measurement levels.
Photo credit: Math Hombre, 2013
Characteristics
- Duration: approx 5-10 minutes
- Applicable Knowledge Components: Measurement Levels (conceptual)
- Bloom’s revised taxonomy: Understand + Conceptual
- Required materials: none
- Introduced by: Hidde de Jong
Setting it up
- Ask the group to stand up and make space
- Ask the group to align themselves according to height
- If students ask: should the highest person be left or right, let them decide.
- Once they are done, ask the group to align themselves according to age.
- Once they are done, ask the group to align according to eye color.
- The students will struggle of course.
- The students may form groups -The students may discuss and conclude the task cannot be done
- With the students still standing, ask them why the task could not be completed or why they did not form a straight line like with height or age?
- Ask them: what is different about eye color?
- They will say something like: ‘well.. there is no natural order in eye colors’. This is the insight.
- Repeat the insight back the whole class: apparently, depending on how we measure things, some things can be ordered, others can only be named. This is what we call measurement levels and this is what you’ll learn more about in this lesson.