‘How would you find out which bottle holds the most?’ A simple question, but there were some interesting responses from a Reception/Y1 class this week. The focus of the lesson was all about comparing the capacity of a range of different containers and the mathematical language being used was spot on – empty, half-full, nearly full, full, overflowing. Very exciting stuff.
The class were totally absorbed (that’s a capacity joke…!) by the water being poured out from bottles and jugs from a large tray of coloured water.
The most interesting part of the lesson came from the questions involving a comparison of two containers, “Which container do you think will hold the most? Why? How can we test that out?”
The teacher was hoping to get an answer that involved pouring from one container to the other and that was the next step in her planned lesson. The actual responses were brilliant:
“Fill them up and weigh them.”
“See how long it takes to fill them.”
“You could fill them and see which one sinks first.”
Totally unexpected ideas, which the teacher did well to acknowledge and then move on to the pouring idea that she had planned.
I spoke to the Y1 children once they were working in small groups and we talked about their ideas. They were very clear that weighing was a good idea, “because it’s all about how big a bottle is.” They described how they would use balance scales and whichever was heavier held the most water. We then talked about using a timer to see how long they would take to fill and they emphasized fair testing, “the tap must be going the same for the bottles.” Once again they understood that the longer it took to fill a bottle the bigger the container would be.
The teacher is going to follow this up with experiments for the children to test these out. It should be interesting and always goes to show that you should expect the unexpected when teaching young children!
The most interesting part of the lesson came from the questions involving a comparison of two containers, “Which container do you think will hold the most? Why? How can we test that out?”
The teacher was hoping to get an answer that involved pouring from one container to the other and that was the next step in her planned lesson. The actual responses were brilliant:
“Fill them up and weigh them.”
“See how long it takes to fill them.”
“You could fill them and see which one sinks first.”
Totally unexpected ideas, which the teacher did well to acknowledge and then move on to the pouring idea that she had planned.
I spoke to the Y1 children once they were working in small groups and we talked about their ideas. They were very clear that weighing was a good idea, “because it’s all about how big a bottle is.” They described how they would use balance scales and whichever was heavier held the most water. We then talked about using a timer to see how long they would take to fill and they emphasized fair testing, “the tap must be going the same for the bottles.” Once again they understood that the longer it took to fill a bottle the bigger the container would be.
The teacher is going to follow this up with experiments for the children to test these out. It should be interesting and always goes to show that you should expect the unexpected when teaching young children!
Related articles:
Teaching capacity with elastic bands
Activities for KS1
A watery context for measures and money
Activities for KS2 looking at the cost of water.
Teaching data handling creatively
A bath time graph story
Teaching capacity with elastic bands
Activities for KS1
A watery context for measures and money
Activities for KS2 looking at the cost of water.
Teaching data handling creatively
A bath time graph story
