Comparison with leafs/smallest to biggest

Direct comparison

The key focus of this step is to directly compare the attributes of two or more objects to establish, for example, which is longer, heavier or holds more. When comparing three or more objects they can be ordered.

This is important because comparison is needed to meaningfully describe length, weight and volume. For example, to say "my pencil is long" does not have a lot of meaning, but to say "my pencil is longer than yours" is meaningful.

Considerable time may be spent on these experiences for children to become aware of what can be done to an object without changing the quantity of the attribute that is being investigated. This is often described as conservation of measure. For example, does the length of the leaf change when it is moved? 

We talked about a fair comparison and that it is important to have one end of the objects aligned when comparing length.

After comparing our leaves we had some time to compare different objects from around the classroom. We had to use our new knowledge and skills we had just learnt to make a fair comparison.