Investigation: How long have we been alive?

Lead In:

We began by discussing how long we had been alive for. Nearly everyone shared how many years and months they had been and so we discussed why we felt those are the best units of measurement for time to use for that situation.  We then thought of different units of measurement for time we could use to answer that question. We came up with:

° whole years and fractions of years

° whole months and fractions of months

° weeks

° days

° hours, minutes, seconds and of course, our dearly loved nano-second.

Investigation:

We then chose one of those units of measurements and began experimenting with strategies to measure how long we had been alive.  Most elected to find out how many days, a few explored how many weeks and some others challenged their thinking a bit further by finding out how many minutes!!!

Sharing:

We paired up and shared the strategies we used and then we invited some to share with the whole class the strategy they came up with.

Reflecting:

Examining all the different strategies that we shared on the whiteboard, we then analysed which we felt were more effective and which we felt might be a bit too complicated even though they were successful.  By looking at them we were able to reflect on the usefulness number lines can be as a strategy since most of us had chosen to use one.