options: Measurement & Data: students learn to work with data and measure attributes such as time, money, length, area, and volume. They may learn to compare measurements to operations and convert between different units of measure.

Statistics & Probability: students learn to analyze and produce data distributions, and build understanding of univariate and bivariate data. They learn to interpret data, make statistical inferences, justify conclusions, understand rules of probability, and use probability to make decisions.

Ratios & Proportional Relationships: students learn to recognize, describe, represent, and reason with ratios, rates, proportional relationships, and percent.

Functions: students learn to define, use, and evaluate functions to model relationships between quantities.

Number Systems and Quantity: students learn to understand the complex number system and reason quantitatively.

Modeling: students learn to choose and use appropriate mathematics and statistics to analyze real-world empirical situations, improve decisions, and report on their conclusions and the reasoning behind them.

Number & Operations - Fractions: students learn to understand fractions as numbers and may work with them using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Operations & Algebra: students learn to solve problems using algebraic thinking and operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They may learn to identify and explain arithmetic patterns, evaluate or manipulate numerical expressions, and reason with equations and inequalities.

Geometry: students learn to classify geometric figures by their properties, and understand and compare the relationships between them. Students develop and use formulas to compute lengths, areas, and volumes, and they use transformations to generate new shapes and compare existing ones. Geometry can be studied with and without coordinates.

Counting & Cardinality: students learn to know number names and the count sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers.

Number & Operations in Base Ten: students learn to work with the base-ten system and build place value understanding.
problem_activity: Narrative
The purpose of this activity is for students to identify objects that are longer or shorter than a given object. Students find two objects that are longer and two objects that are shorter than an unsharpened pencil. The students use the language of “longer than” and “shorter than” and record their findings in complete sentences so that indirect comparison can be discussed during the activity synthesis.
MLR8 Discussion Supports.
Think aloud and use gestures to emphasize the language used for comparison. For example, use hands further or closer apart to accompany the words “longer” and “shorter”.
Advances: Listening, Representing
Required Materials
Materials to Gather
Materials from a previous lesson
Pencils
Required Preparation
Each group of 4 students needs access to the materials from the previous lesson and one unsharpened pencil.
Create a two-column chart with the headings “longer” and “shorter” for the synthesis.
Launch
Groups of 4
Give each group an unsharpened pencil and access to the objects from the previous lesson.
Display two objects that are not the same length (for example, a crayon and a marker).
“How do the lengths of these objects compare?” (The crayon is shorter than the marker. The marker is longer than the crayon.)
30 seconds: quiet think time
Share responses.
Activity
“You are going to compare the length of objects to the length of the unsharpened pencil. Find two objects that are longer than the pencil and two that are shorter than the pencil. Write a sentence for each comparison.”
8 minutes: independent work time
Monitor for two objects that are close in length but one is found to be longer than the unsharpened pencil and one is found to be shorter.
Student Facing
Find 2 objects that are longer and 2 objects that are shorter than the unsharpened pencil.
Write a sentence that compares each object to the pencil.
Example: The bulletin board
is longer than the pencil.
Student Response
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Activity Synthesis
Display the T-chart with headings “longer” and “shorter.”
“What objects are longer than an unsharpened pencil?” (a book, the ruler, the height of the desk)
Record responses.
What objects are shorter than an unsharpened pencil?” (a marker cap, a crayon, a toothpick)
Record responses.
Display previously identified objects that are close in length.
“How do the lengths of the two objects compare?” (The book that is shorter than the pencil is also shorter than the block because the block is longer than the pencil.)
“Because we compared the length of objects to the pencil, we know that some objects are longer or shorter than others without lining them up.”


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