Measurement in the classroom

In this weeks reading, there was a strong emphasis on how to teach and use measurement in the classroom. From these readings it appears that many teachers do not go over the ideas of measurement thoroughly enough for students to fully comprehend it. In the Thompson reading they discuss how "Measurement is one of the most useful of the mathematical strands for everyday citizens." They then go on to talk about how many middle school students were unable to correctly measure given objects or properly select the correct answer on a standardized test for an estimation of an objects size using measurement. I found this to be very interesting, it seems that teachers are not focusing on the use of measurement because they believe that students should have already learned these basic ideas. In the article they go on further stating that many students have this issue of measurement because they are not familiar with the metric system.
This idea of the importance of understanding measurement in the metric system reminds me of when I was in Australia. Living there for 5 months I had to become familiar with the metric system. At first I had an extremely hard time converting kilos to pounds and kilometers to miles. Ordering meet from the deli and figuring out how far away I was from a given destination became a daily struggle. Growing up I was not exposed to the metric system and if I was I felt like my teachers speed through these ideas and believed that their students would not necessarily need them in the future. I find that focusing on measurement and understanding it to greater level is extremely important.
The readings also discuss the importance of investigations through measurement, If I were to teach measurement in my classroom, I would have the students compare the metric system to the measurement system that is common to the US. The students would also have a chance to ask questions and correlate ideas as to what is similar and what is different in the two systems.
Overall, I think that measurement is a very important concept that many students need to concur. Like the Thompson reading discussed students at the college level are still having difficulties conquering the idea of size and measurement, which is showing that there is not a strong enough focus on this idea.