Converting Units - Millimetres and Millilitres - Worksheet

The lesson on 'Millimetres and Millilitres' is designed to help children understand the concept of converting between different units of measure, specifically focusing on the metric units millimetres (mm) and millilitres (ml). The National Curriculum objective is to facilitate the conversion between metres, millimetres, litres, and millilitres. To aid in teaching this concept, resources such as differentiated worksheets, teaching slides, rulers, metre sticks, jugs, and bottles are used to demonstrate practical examples. Key vocabulary includes terms like 'milli', 'length', 'mass', 'convert', 'conversion', 'metres', 'millilitres', and the abbreviations 'mm' and 'ml'. The children explore the prefix 'milli-' and learn that it denotes a thousandth of a unit, which is crucial for understanding how to convert between the units of measure.

During the lesson, the children undertake various activities that challenge them to convert measurements both ways, with some parts missing, and to articulate these conversions in words and calculations. They are encouraged to reason and solve problems involving true or false questions about conversions. For example, they learn that to convert litres to millilitres, they must multiply by 1,000, not 100 as a common misconception might suggest. The worksheets provide a series of conversion tasks, such as converting '49,000 mm' to metres or '64 hundreds ml' to litres, with the answers being '49 m' and '6.4 l' respectively. The lesson also includes reasoning and problem-solving exercises where students verify statements about conversions and determine if conversions made by a character named Rosie are accurate, reinforcing the correct method of dividing or multiplying by 1,000 to switch between units.