How big is the room?

This investigation is just brilliant! Great fun to do and a huge amount of possible learning, covering everything from introducing decimals to learning about medians. And this is all with 8-year olds!

You start by setting the children up for the fact that they are going to do a practical investigation, discuss all the team work expectations, and then finally give them the challenge. Then let them loose and see what happens!

The key is to use counting sticks, which have ten divisions marked, but no numbers, and this leads the children naturally into needing to use decimals to measure distances less than 1 metre. Averages come in when they discover that all the teams have different answers. And you can go on to investigate perimeter as well. Allow a week for this one if you want to maximise the learning opportunities.

Ages 7-10    Printable materials (pdf) - 5 pages of teacher's notes and 2 pupil sheets.