If you know what you’re doing, please skip ahead to the assessment task and finish this off. If you want to walk through the process one last time with the measurement progression, please carry on!
1. Print out the Make Sense of Number strand.
Make sure you have the Measure and Interpret Shape and Space strand in front of you so you can refer to the details for each step. Sometimes, we’ll just refer to this as the Measurement strand.
For our purposes here, we’re just going to look at measurement. You can decide if the Shapes and Transformations, and Location Progressions are relevant. For now, we’re going to assume that they are not relevant.
The Measurement progression looks like this, but it will have descriptions of skills and knowledge in all of the steps. You can download the Measure and Interpret Shape and Space strand here if you need to.
2. Choose a specific sample task involving measurement from your teaching programme.
Choose some kind of teaching material that your learners have to work with, not NZQA unit standard descriptions.
It’s often a good idea to choose a task where your learners have to estimation and then use a measuring tool or measure something for a purpose.
Here are some examples of tasks that you could choose where your learners have to use measurement:
- Estimating and then weighing the amount of flour needed to bake a cake using a set of scales.
- Estimating and then measuring length in metres and millimetres using a tape or steel ruler.
- Calibrating a workshop tool and then using it to measure something.
- Recording units of length, weight, temperature or time for a work-related or other purpose.
- Converting from metres to millimetres and vice versa. For example, in a carpentry or engineering context.
- Converting from kilograms to grams and vice versa. For example, in a cooking context.
- Using tools, units, and formulas to measure side lengths, perimeters, and areas. For example, measuring a rectangle of land and then calculating the area available for planting.
- Calculating volume or capacity. For example, in a farming or engineering context.
- Converting between measurement systems. For example, converting from metres to inches.
3. Have clear reasons for choosing the sample
In the assessment template, as with all of your samples, you’ll need to say why you chose to analyse this calculation or task. There are lots of reasons. Here are some:
- You might have chosen a measuring task that you already know causes difficulties for your learners.
- You might already know that you need to create some new material to teach a calculation in a new part of your programme.
- Your supervisor or manager may have asked you to focus on a particular measurement or calculation that requires measurement.
4. Start your mapping with the strategy progressions
Refer to the Measurement progressions and then you shade in your own chart down to the relevant step.
This time, the best place to start mapping the measurement demands is at steps 2 / 3.
Step 1 is very basic. If your measurement task was to compare the length of two sticks and say which was bigger, you’d be at step 1. Most trades and vocational courses will have measurement demands from steps 2 / 3 up to step 6.
Here’s what you’ll see on the Measurement progression.
5. Use what you know about your own subject
Use your own knowledge of your training material or the measurement task to decide which step applies for each of the strategy progressions.
Here are some things to think about. Does the calculation require:
- Comparing two objects for length and weight? Have a look at step 1.
- Doing simple measurements and recording the measurements in standard units like millimetres? Have a look at step 2 / 3.
- Using tools like scales or tape measures to measure things for a specific purpose? For example, use electronic scales to weigh 200 grams of butter for a cooking recipe. Have a look at step 4.
- Doing simple conversions? For example, working out that 100cm = 1m. Have a look at step 4.
- Using a formula to calculate area from measurements of length? Have a look at step 5
- Doing more complicated conversions? For example, converting 1.25L to 1,250 millilitres? Also, step 5
- Calculating volume? Have a look at step 6.
Remember that when we’re working out the demands of a measurement task or calculation, we are only interested in the task or calculation. As we mentioned earlier, we’ll get to what your learners can actually do later on when we look at diagnostic assessment.
If you work in trades or do any kind of vocational training, the measurements that your learners have to work with are probably at least at step 2 / 3 for basic measurement, at step 4 if they have to use tools like scales or tape measures, or if you use formulas most likely at steps 5 or 6.
We often find that in trades and vocational training that the measurement demands are quite high.
As always, if you’re not sure about what step, do this mapping together with a colleague.
6. Map the demands for measurement
If you’re working on paper, get a highlighter and shade down from the top until you’ve included the highest step that you identified for measurement.
You can download a chart and worksheet here for mapping your sample measurement or measurement related calculation. It’s exactly the same as section 3.6 of your assessment task. Print this out and you can use it as a rough draft and for notes.
Once you’ve mapped the measurement progression, you’ll end up with something like this:
7. Answer the questions and finish of the assessment task
Once you have mapped your measurement task visually, you need to be able to talk about your mapping means.
As with your other samples, you’ll need to answer a series of questions to show that you understand what you’ve just done.
These questions are in the assessment template and in the worksheet if you download it:
- What text or task did you use?
- Why did you choose this as your sample?
- Out of everything here, what are the most important progressions and steps?
- What about planning for assessment and teaching?
If you can map a sample measurement or measurement-related calculation and answer the questions, you can finish of this assessment and hand it in.
Make sure you keep your sample handy. You’ll need to scan it and upload it when you submit your completed assessment task.
If it’s a measurement task or activity that is not something you can easily scan, you can write down what learners have to do and add this to your responses in the template.
If it’s a practical activity you might be able to take some digital photos and upload those for us to see.
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