Year 6 maths worksheet: Imperial and metric units

It is a sad state of affairs that schools are still having to teach children to convert imperial to metric units, even when we have been metric for over 40 years. Many adults still use feet and inches to measure their height, use miles per gallon in their cars and stones and pounds to measure their weight. Yet a great many do not know how many pounds there are in a stone or how many yards there are in a mile, making the whole thing nonsensical and bewildering to children.

Nevertheless, here it is, a page of conversions with some info about the imperial system.
Convert imperial to metric units (1)

Year 3 maths worksheet: Reading scales

Children are used to reading scales where the divisions go up in ones, but they find it much harder when either they go up in larger numbers or when not all the divisions are numbered. This worksheet does both of these. The ruler shown is a scale drawing and each division is 10 cm, but only the 100 cm division lines are named.

Once it has been established that each mark represents 10 cm., it is relatively straightforward to work out the lengths shown. As children usually only use centimetre rulers this might be the first time they come across a ruler where not all the divisions are numbered.

Reading scales (1)

Year 6 Maths worksheet: Converting metric units (2)

y6_larger_units_to_smaller_2This is about as hard as it gets for converting larger metric units to smaller ones. The larger units all include decimals and a good knowledge of multiplying by 10, 100 or 1000 is needed.

As a special treat the last question is really tricky; How many centimetres in 1.9 kilometres. I imagine that there are quite a lot of adults who would struggle with that one, but taken in logical steps it proves to be not so difficult. Find the number of metres in 1.9 kilometres, then find the number of centimtres in that amount. easy eh. It is quite interesting to look at other distances in terms of centimetres: journey home from school, length of a football pitch etc which would make for an interesting investigation.

Year 6 Convert larger metric units to smaller (pg 2)

Year 1 maths worksheet: Longer and shorter

longer-and-shorterThis page adds to our selection of measurement worksheets for year 1. It looks at two terms, longer and shorter,  and should be used in conjunction with plenty of discussion in the home. Ask questions such as ‘Which is the taller candle?’ and make requests, eg ‘Pass me the shorter pencil, please’ during the everyday activities you do with your children.

Longer and shorter