Really big and really small numbers are tricky for people to “see”. So what better way for students to visualize big and small numbers than by using something that they already know a lot about: themselves!
For this activity, from Jo Boaler’s Mindset Mathematics Grade 5 book, students worked in groups to figure out what 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000, 10x, 100x, and 1000x one of their heights is. If one student is the unit, what are other items that represent fractions or multiples of that one unit?
We spent several days on this, as it was really hard for students to find something that was 100 or 1000 times as big as one of their heights (they were much more successful with the smaller units). They had to take abstract numbers and assign a very concrete representation to it.
I would say that this lesson was engaging and definitely pushed their thinking. I probably would give them less time to do it in the future, because I think there were diminishing returns the more we worked on it. I always like a good Jo Boaler activity, and this was a fun way to introduce our work with multiplication and division of whole numbers.
Teaching With Mrs. Clark 