Measurement Cooperative Groups

I am working on trying to incorporate Cooperative Groups more often this year because I am seeing the benefits of them.  I love seeing my students work together and work as a team.  A few of my teacher friends and I decided we would split our students into their cooperative groups to use  nonstandard units of measure to measure our large pumpkins that Food Lion donated to our classroom.  We made a recording sheet for the groups to fill out during the activity which we had modeled using the day before.  Our students used plastic links, index cards taped together and pipe cleaners.  With the nature of the activity, we had to have different jobs than our previous lesson.  We had 2 Measurers, a Materials Manager and a Writer.  I have to say this lesson didn't go as well as the last one, but it wasn't horrible by any means.  Everyone in the group wanted to measure, so they would grab the materials and then the student whose job it was to measure wouldn't have what they needed.  Next year I will probably add another nonstandard unit of measure and let each student measure with one of them to make them all feel like they have a part.   Here are a few pictures of my sweet students measuring and recording.

Eli recording his groups measurements.

Kameryn reading the most/least questions to her group.

 

Karma and Eli working together.

 

Hannah measuring with the index cards.

Meredith and a friend measuring their pumpkin with links.

Johsua measuring with links.

Ray'shawn and his group members measuring with links.  Do you think this is too many?

All of my students were able to answer which tool they used the most and least of, which was a super important part of the lesson.  We still have work to do with working together, but I refuse to give up on cooperative groups! :)