Measurement - Domestic tasks help with 3D thinking
I have noticed that many students in years 7-11 struggle with the concepts needed for measurement. I really think this has a lot to do with the reduced amount of practical tasks that young people are involved in nowadays. Today’s technology loving kids tend to be glued to their gadgets whenever they have downtime in preference to more hands-on practical activities like craft activities and hobbies. Don't get me wrong, I love technology too, but a balance of practical and online learning is beneficial for developing maths concepts.
These days, young people are also generally not so involved in grocery shopping (budgeting) and food preparation either, all good practical measurement situations.
Examples of development of the concept of area in the past might have been making curtains for a room, planting grass seed in a paddock or backyard and painting a wall. Stacking a "cord of wood" provides concepts in volume. Parents should not under-estimate the importance of having their children help with all domestic tasks as providing mathematics abilities and concepts.
The measurement assessment task that brought this to my attention is one of a property with a fence surrounding it in the shape of a rectangle. Let's say the property was 40 metres x 25 metres. The students were given a plan view of the property and told that they needed to calculate the amount of paint needed to paint the inside of the fence. The fence was 1.6 metres high. Five litres of paint was required to paint 40 square metres of fence and the a double coat would be needed.
Since the student had been learning the topic by working on 2 dimensional diagrams given to them in books it was interesting that many of them did not relate the diagram to a 3 dimensional situation. One student worked out the area of the land instead of the area of the fence. Two other students worked out the perimeter of the fence since their understanding was the perimeter is the outside of a shape! This brings me to another aspect of learning maths which is the vocabulary. Yes, perimeter is the outside of a shape, but the calculation required the perimeter times the height of the fence in order to find the area of the fence which is located on the perimeter of the property. Conceptually these two students did not grasp the practical nature of the task.
The old technical drawing subject with its "perspective drawings" (plan and elevation) which is no longer taught would also have provided insight for this question.
