Converting Units - Imperial Units (Activity) - Presentation

In today's lesson, students delve into the world of imperial measurements, exploring units such as pounds, stone, and inches, and how they relate to metric units like centimetres. The lesson aims to familiarise students with common imperial units and encourages them to think of examples they may already know. Using a ruler as a visual aid, the lesson highlights the approximate equivalence of one inch to 2.5 centimetres, with the wavy sign '≈' representing this approximation. Students are then invited to convert inches to centimetres and vice versa, using multiplication and division to understand the conversion process.

Through a series of activities, students are guided to apply the knowledge that one inch is approximately equal to 2.5 centimetres and to use this fact to estimate the length in centimetres of given measurements in inches, such as 5 inches and 15 inches. The activities progress to more complex conversions, including converting from centimetres to inches and dealing with larger quantities, such as 108 inches into feet. By dividing and multiplying, students learn that 12 inches make up one foot and are challenged to calculate the equivalent of 9 feet in centimetres. The lesson also includes reasoning exercises, such as comparing heights in different units, and a main activity where students measure their own height in both imperial and metric units, fostering a practical understanding of these measurements.