“How far is a light year?”
by Liana Ponce
Why Scale?
This year I worked with 4th grade students and teachers as they developed their understanding of large numbers in our place value system. We discussed questions like - How big is a million? and What is ten times more than 100 or a hundred times more than 100?
I also worked with 5th grade students and teachers as they applied that same thinking to understanding decimals, decimal fractions, and the distance between Earth and other objects in space. We discussed questions like - What kind of answer do we expect to get when we multiply an amount less than 1 by another amount less than 1? and How far is a light year?
In previous years teaching I struggled to support my 2nd grade students in relating timelines to number lines, drawing and reading maps, and understanding the idea of negative numbers.
Concepts of scale are inherent in all these skills. I now see that scale is an important idea in all content areas and they can work together to build student understanding throughout the elementary grades.
Here’s my rough guide for a cross-disciplinary approach to developing student understanding of scale.
Scale Across Disciplines
Below I’ve pulled out the anchor standards that support understanding of scale across the Common Core State Standards in ELA and Math, the Next Generation Science Standards, and the College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards.
mathematics
CCSS Standard of Mathematical Practice 2: Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
CCSS Standard of Mathematical Practice 7: Look for and make use of structure.
english language arts
CCSS Reading Anchor Standard 3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
CCSS Writing Anchor Standard 3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences.
social studies
C3 Framework Geography Concept: Geographic Representations: Spatial Views of the World
C3 Framework History Concept: Change, Continuity, and Context
science
NGSS Cross Cutting Concept 3: Scale, proportion, and quantity. In considering phenomena, it is critical to recognize what is relevant at different measures of size, time, and energy and to recognize how changes in scale, proportion, or quantity affect a system’s structure or performance.
Tools for teaching scale across disciplines
Activities for Building Concepts of Scale Across Grades K Through 5
Those anchor standards look different at each grade level based on cognitive development and the content standards at each grade. You can take a look at the breakdown of content standard by grade level here to see how concepts of scale span the entirety of the elementary curriculum. Based on those grade level standards, here are some activities that are interdisciplinary and can build student understanding of scale.
social studies
science
math
Kindergarten - 2nd Grade
For a given length of time (week, month, year) build a class graph of the weather each day. Students can ask and answer questions about the graph based on grade level.
Students engage in sorting objects, pictures, or other information into categories. Categories and number of categories can be predetermined or decided on by students. Older students can be asked to categorize based on weight, size, height, etc and then use measurement skills to prove why they believe certain objects belong in certain categories.
3rd Grade - 5th Grade
Students create timelines of historical events, paying attention to the units of measurement and scale of the timeline. Give students experience with a variety of scale of timeline from one day to multiple years as different events are discussed through the curriculum.
Gather data about average temperatures, average rainfall, average hours of sunlight, etc, in different countries and plot information on a map.
social studies
english language arts
Kindergarten - 2nd Grade
After reading a text (fiction or nonfiction), have students make a storyboard of important events in chronological order.
After reading a fiction text, students draw the setting of the text or read a map of the setting.
After reading a nonfiction text, students can explore a map of the text’s setting.
Students create maps for the setting of a narrative they wrote or told.
3rd Grade - 5th Grade
After reading a fiction text, students draw a map of the story’s setting including important details.
Students write their own narratives based on a sequence of events. Students read each other’s narratives and create a storyboard of events in chronological order for another student’s writing.
Students create maps of settings in fictional texts or study maps of key locations in nonfiction texts. Students can begin to study the scale of maps provided and can calculate distances from one landmark to another using the scale.
science
math
Kindergarten - 2nd Grade
Students are given a set of objects and are asked to sort them by size.
Students study different types of plants and classify them based on observable characteristics.
Students grow plants and take measurements of the plants over time using non-standard or standard units of measure.
3rd Grade - 5th Grade
Students create line plots of collected data and determine the scale of the line plot based on the data, including fractions of a unit.
Create and interpret scaled bar graphs and pictographs based on science standards (volume of water in reservoirs, daily or monthly temperatures, weight of objects in different states).
Explore units of measurement that are very small and very large by studying benchmark objects for each unit. Students can order units and/or benchmark objects from smallest to largest, largest to smallest, and write comparison statements.
math
english language arts
Kindergarten - 2nd Grade
Students write a story about a time they wanted more or less of something.
Create timelines of events in a text or their own lives and connect them to number lines.
3rd Grade - 5th Grade
Students study and answer questions about timelines provided by authors in a text.
Students write fictional stories and draw a maps of the setting using a scale of their choosing.