This displays a page of “counting on” instructions set in interesting contexts – for example, rat jumps, alien jumps and bird hopping. It is useful for students to be able to skip count when reading scales.

Ask students why scales jump in these increments.

This displays some scales that go up in 2s, 50s, 100s, 5s, 0.1s and 0.2s.

Students are asked what amount each gap represents.

This displays the Getting started on page 209.

You could extend this and ask students to brainstorm all the standard units they know.

These could then be grouped by the attribute they measure.

This displays some photos with some questions.

Students are asked what they might use to measure certain attributes and what unit might be best.

Example: A photo of a truck is shown. Students are asked how the weight might be measured and in what unit.

Answer A weighing station in tonne.

  scales that weigh up to at least 5 kg, a tape measure

Choose some lengths, heights and weights and ask students to write down an estimate of each.

Example: The height of the door, the weight of a stapler

For estimating the height of the door, you could suggest that students use their own height as a benchmark.

Group students according to their answer and get one student from each group to justify why they made the estimate they did.

Example: Students might be grouped into 140 cm up to 180 cm, 180 cm up to 220 cm, and 220 cm up to 240 cm.

Get someone to measure.

Award five points to the group with the closest estimate.

This displays some photos with questions that ask students to estimate attributes.

Example: A photo of some gates is shown with a house in the background. Students are asked to estimate the width of the gates.

There is no “right” answer so this gives the opportunity for plenty of discussion.

You could also discuss appropriate units.

Encourage reasonable estimates rather than focusing on getting it exactly right.

Look around you, Give students some measurements such as 5 cm.

Ask them to find something around them that might have this measure and discuss it with a partner.

Encourage reasonable estimates rather than focusing on getting it exactly right.

You could use Extra task 4 in this chapter as a starter.

This displays some photos of real life angles and asks students to identify some acute angles and some obtuse angles in the pictures.