Elementary School students' Ability in Measuring Volume

Author: Jen-Tae Lin, Shyang-Horng Shieh(Taiwan Provincipal Institute for Elementary School teachers' Inservice Education), Wen-Den Chen(Department of Physics, National Taiwan Normal University)

Abstract：

The goal of this study is to find out the way how students form the concept of volume and make successful measurements. We divide the pro-found significance of measurement into five levels (a) Indentifying, comparing, and ranking the attributes.(b) Using a convenient instrument to read accurately and record the data correctly, (c)Selecting a proper substitut-ive tool and choosing a suitable unit for a measurement task, (d) comprehending the meaning of unit and making equivalent conversions, and (e) Applying the relationship between the attributes and effective to a measurement problem.
The results of this study show that most of the first graders have already reached level (a), the second and third grade students have reached levels (b) and (c) they can suggest one or two stratagies for solving measurement problems. The fourth grade students have reached level (d).
However, most students before the fourth grade failed when they faced a more flexible problem. In order to solve such a problem, they need the ability of suggesting a clever method as well as a clear concept of all attribute relationships. This fact reveals that most of the students before grade four are poor in these relative knowledge and are not ready to solve such king of problems.

Keywords：Attribute, Volume, Measurement, Capacity

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