Welcome Parents/Guardians

Mathematics learning and teaching today is most likely different to when you were at school. In this changing world, there is more focus on teaching mathematical reasoning. As we move further into the 21st century, your children will encounter many different scenarios in the future and will need to know how to adapt and apply mathematical thinking to achieve well.

This website has been especially created for you. Our aim is to provide you with an easy to read and helpful resource to support your child learn measurement, in particular, "mass" and "weight".

Specifically, this website:

- outlines the progression of learning in the important early years of primary school.

- provides examples of resources used in the classroom to accommodate your child’s learning needs and serve them well into the 21st Century.

- provides some tip sheets designed specifically for you to support your child’s learning of mass and weight at home whilst having fun.

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to help us prepare your child to make sense of mass and weight as an attribute of measurement. To assist you further, short video clips, diagrams and a glossary have been included. We hope that you find the information provided informative and helpful.

MASS AND WEIGHT

Mass and weight are terms which are often used interchangeably but they are not the same thing. This can be really confusing. To clarify these differences: "mass" is defined as the amount of matter contained in an object, whilst the definition of "weight" is the pull of gravity of an object ( McDonaugh et al. (2013).

This website uses the term "mass" instead of "weight", because in most cases, when working with children in the early primary school years, the measurement involves the mass of an object.

In addition, mass is also the preferred term used in the Australian Curriculum.

Source: Easy Engineering

Difference between mass & weight explained in this short video clip

key concepts of mass your children will learn

The learning focus for mass is to understand the nature of mass and language used to compare objects, and the non-standard and standard units in relation to measuring mass.
Mass is one attribute of measurement. Other attributes include length, capacity, time, area and volume.
Mass is not visual. Mass cannot be measured by sight and must be done by feel. This is an important concept for learning about mass because objects can be larger and weigh less than objects that may be smaller but heavier.

Click the learning progression tile below to see the phases of learning for your child.

To navigate this website with ease, just click on the labelled tiles below to be taken directly

to the webpages. Alternatively, you can use the menu side bar in the top left-hand corner of this page.

Learning Progression

Resources

Tip Sheets for parents

Acknowledgements

Glossary

References

Source: Google Images

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

We wish to acknowledge the people of the Kulin Nations. Specifically, we acknowledge the Bunurong/Boon Wurrung People whose land we live, work and study.

We pay our respects to the ancestors and elders past, present and emerging.

We also pay our respect to our children attending our school and their families. We respect and celebrate diversity.

Page updated

Report abuse