5th-Grade Math Assignment

Fifth-grade students use a ruler to measure the length of several bars in inches. This assignment is weak because it is more closely aligned with second- and third-grade standards. There are no fifth-grade standards about measuring length. 

Focus
This assignment is not aligned with any fifth-grade standards. The only fifth-grade standards that relate to length require students to convert between different measurement units in the context of multistep real-world problems (standard 5.MD.A.1) and find the volume of right rectangular prisms using the (length x width x height) formula (standard 5.MD.C.5). This assignment only requires students to measure the length of several bars in inches and most closely aligns with second-grade standard 2.MD.A.1 (measure the length of an object by selecting and using appropriate tools such as rulers) and third-grade standard 3.MD.B.4 (generate measurement data by measuring lengths using rulers marked with halves and fourths of an inch). 

Practice Standards
In this assignment, students use rulers to measure length, which is related to Mathematical Practice Standard #5 ("Use appropriate tools strategically"). However, this is not a meaningful fifth-grade opportunity to use a tool because students are working with below-grade-level content, they don’t have to select which tool would be most appropriate to use given the objects to be measured, and the “objects” (pictures of bars) are all already positioned correctly with one edge aligned at the zero mark.