One of the coolest things we did this year was design our own branded packaging tape. We just happened to turn it into a teaching resource as well.
We call it the Naked Measuring Tape. It’s basically, a measuring tape without the numbers. Or if you like, it’s a blank number line that just repeats.
The idea is that you can supply the numbers and use it for measuring or work with additive strategies.
Anyway, one of our recent graduates at the Department of Corrections has come up with some innovative ways of using the Naked Measuring Tape to strengthen literacy and numeracy skills in his learners.
Here’s Steve who works in grounds and maintenance training:
I decided to get the naked tape into action! My problem was holes in the lawn, garden area or driveway/hard surfaces and not knowing how much fill would be required to top up the hole.
What I needed was some way to measure the depth of the hole to give me some idea of volume. My solution was part of a broom handle, piece of polystyrene and the naked tape.
The polystyrene disc sits over the top of the hole and the underside of the polystyrene gives me my finished surface level.
The broom handle with the naked tape on pushed through a hole in the polystyrene gives me a way of measuring the holes depth. This gives me volume.
I had to measure the thickness of the polystyrene which was thirteen millimetres and then start the naked tape thirteen millimetres from the bottom of the broom handle.
This effectively zeroed out the thickness of the polystyrene much like using a set scales for weighing things.
By counting up the graduations on the naked tape I was able to get the third figure for my volumetric formula.
