Sarah Miller

TE 405
Lesson Study Project
Analysis and Reflection
Our lesson was taught in my second-grade classroom, and was focused on measurement.
Since my mentor teacher saves measurement, time and money units for the end of the year,
students were not yet doing anything with measurement and as a result my group and I chose to
focus on expanding existing knowledge in order to help students build a stronger foundation for
what they would soon be learning from my mentor teacher. We were specifically focusing on
quantification of measurement and the importance of standard units.
Additionally, going into the lesson, we were unsure which students might struggle or
excel with the concepts of measurement during the lesson because I had not seen them working
with measurement yet. However, we saw a wide range of misconceptions and realizations that
we had anticipated and others that we had not, which demonstrated that the lesson was
meaningful and relevant to these students. Laying out our lesson using the Five Practices for
Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions methods, including creating a high level
task, anticipating, monitoring, sequencing and selecting, proved to be a very valuable learning
experience.
For our lesson launch, we created a chart of different units and tools that helped students
explore what they already knew prior to the lesson. However, before we could begin this,
students were unsure what a unit was. One student volunteered that it had something to do with
length, but he was unable to elaborate. At this point, I gave them the example of the inch to get
their thinking started. From this we compiled a list including a foot, tape measure, centimeter,
millimeter, kilometer, ruler, inch, meter, and the fact that there are 12 inches in a foot. This
indicated that students had a basic knowledge of some of the names of units, so the next step was
to see if they could connect tools and units with things they would best measure.
Student volunteers said that they would use a ruler, tape measure, millimeters and inches
to measure a book; a tape measure and centimeters to measure the white board; and a ruler,
inches, centimeters and yard stick to measure a box of crayons. Two students revised their
suggestions quickly, coming to the realization that they may not have chosen the most
appropriate unit or tool to measure a given thing. The student who said he would use centimeters
to measure the white board said it would take a lot to measure the whiteboard with
centimeters, so he realized that he should use a longer unit or tool to measure the white board.
The student who said you could use a yard stick to measure the box of crayons also quickly
admitted that it would be too big. These examples indicate that students were prepared to work
with and make connections between the units and tools used for measurement, so the next step
was to take part in the high level task.
As set out by Smith and Stein, characteristics of a high level task include nonalgorithmic
thinking, exploration of mathematical concepts and processes, and to examine task constraints
that may limit possible solution strategies and solutions (2011). As I circulated and monitored
throughout the task, it was evident that students were engaging in this type of thinking, as well as
debating, using different approaches, questioning and interacting. We first gave students yarn to
measure their pencils (all the same length) with. This turned up some very interesting
conversation as I was monitoring student groups, several of which we anticipated in our lesson
study group prior to the lesson.

Students almost immediately noticed a constraint to the task when they realized, as one
student asked, How can we measure with string? and another student said, You cant say how
long the pencil is. Students were realizing that they could not quantify the measurement of the
pencil with the continuous length of the pencil. Another student made the very insightful
observation that he was able to stretch his piece of yarn longer than its original size when he was
measuring, and that this could change the measurement of the pencil. To expand on this
thought, I asked what problems this might cause, and students decided that this would mean that
the measurement wouldnt be the same when different people used the same piece of yarn. With
the collective agreement that measurement needs to involve the idea of quantification, or how
many, students were then ready to move to the next part of the task, in which half the class used
paper clips to measure the pencil and the other half used paper inches (square inches).
Prior to our lesson, we anticipated seeing a few different misconceptions during this
portion: students measuring without lining up the end of the pencil with their unit, measuring
with gaps or overlaps, and reaching a non-whole number solution and being unsure how to
proceed. All of these misconceptions or struggles were represented in the student solutions
observed during the lesson, and more. One group of struggling students had linked together their
paper clips and lined them up against their pencil. While there were no gaps in their
measurement, there was an overlap. I asked students if they thought they would get the same
answer if their paper clips were linked together and if they were not; this caused them to try a
new approach and to unlink the paper clips. Another group I noticed was using language of
estimation, saying that their pencil was about 4 paper clips long. I asked them to explain what
they meant by this, and they said that part of it was off so they chose 4 paper clips because it
was closest. One group stretched out the string from the first part of their task and measured that
instead of the pencil. Another group came to the final answer of seven and a half inches, which
indicates that they are aware of how fractions can relate to measurement. After monitoring and
attempting to sequence the discussion, I brought students back to the carpet to discuss their work.
Although sequencing did not go exactly as planned in our lesson due to students
volunteering unexpected or unrelated things, there were several connections made across
strategies and misconceptions were addressed. We created a T-chart labeled paper inches and
paper clips, and recorded the answers each group got. A question to elicit strategies or student
thinking that we had planned was, Did you do anything special when you were measuring or
pay attention to anything in specific? I started with the students who had linked their paper clips
together, and one of the students from this group said that if they do this they might get the
wrong number. Another student had a related thought, mentioning that when he measured with
paper inches, he got 8 inches, saying that he and his partner put them together not leaving
spaces. This opened the door to touch on the concept that gaps or overlaps will both lead to
inaccurate measurements. I think it would have been helpful to make a drawing of this at that
point in the lesson to demonstrate the idea, but at the time I only used gestures to demonstrate.
Another set of ideas that were related came from students whose measurements did not
come out exact. One group, as mentioned in the exploration of the high level task, mentioned
that their measurement was about 4 paper clips long. I pointed out that this is a strategy called
estimation that you can use to say what whole number a measurement is closest to. This was a
good transition into the next groups strategy. The group that measured their pencil as seven and
a half inches said that they held the pencil still and we just tucked it under because some of the
pencil was off. This was a more precise measurement, and it was a good spot that these were
both strategies to use when some of the pencil is left over or not all the way used up.

From there, the point of the lesson was to move to forming generalizations. I asked the
students the following question: We were measuring the same thing, a pencil, but using two
different things. What do you notice about that? One student answered, They changed, which
showed that the answers using two different tools were not the same. At this point I should have
asked the question Why would that be? but for some reason skipped past this to the next
question to expand and generalize student thinking, What can you say about the size of the units
and what results you got? As a class, we came to the understanding that the bigger unit
produced a smaller answer and the shorter unit produced a bigger number. So the smaller the
unit, the more you have to use to measure an item.
At this point, I tried to bring students back to the previous investigation of why its
important to have standard units (i.e. how did we get different answers if we were measuring the
same thing?) I asked the question, Why would you say its important to have something like a
standard unit? A student answered, If you didnt have the inch, then you will think its like the
centimeter. When I asked what kind of problems that would cause, he said simply, The wrong
numbers. Crysta chimed in to help him think about this in a new way by asking him, What was
different on our chart? She pointed out that if everybody measures the same thing, but some
people get 4 and some people got 8, we have to ask the questions Four what? Eight what? This
showed the value of having a common unit that we share.
As evidenced by some of the discussion and student solution examples, this lesson was
very meaningful and did expand students knowledge in the area of measurement quantification
and why that is important, basic measurement logistics (what to do when some of the object is
left over, fractions, overlaps and gaps), and how standard units help us. I thought the lesson was
very successful in highlighting these important components of measuring.
Prior to this lesson study project and the research it entailed, I did not give much thought
to some of the underlying challenges and interesting aspects of the topic of measurement. I
thought it was a very straightforward topic. However, after studying what is hard for students
and what is hard to teach, I can see that there are so many necessary considerations for successful
measurement and conceptual understanding of it. However, there is one specific area I would
like to pursue more in-depth during my future teaching: estimation in measurement. This
contains many subcategories, including different strategies to use for estimation. Van de Walle
mentions strategies such as developing benchmarks for reference, using chunking, subdivisions
or iterating a unit mentally. I was excited to see students using language like about 4 units, and
would be interested in learning more about how to advance student thinking and help them
develop more practice with using everyday objects and being able to estimate measurements.
This is something even adults may struggle with, so a solid conceptual understanding of units
and estimation puts students at an advantage.
This lesson study was encouraging for me as a teacher. I got to see our planning and
anticipation play out, and to practice monitoring, selecting and sequencing to bring out the
essential ideas that were the objectives to expand thinking for in the lesson. This is an exciting
example of how student collaboration and discussion in mathematics can be very meaningful and
a great way to expand students existing knowledge.

Bibliography
Smith, M. S., & Stein, M. K. (2011). 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics
Discussions. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Van de Walle. (n.d.). Developing Measurement Concepts.