Rich Learning Tasks

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Questions to facilitate the learning
• How did you decide when the baby step and giant step were the right size?
• What did you do to decide how many baby steps make a giant step?
• How could you have made your number even bigger?
• How could you have made your number smaller?
Scaffolding the learning
• How long would two baby steps be? Does that look like a giant step?
• Is it easier to pick your baby step and giant step first or is it easier to just put together baby steps and
decide when you have a giant step?
Extending the learning
Students might choose a particular number of units and create baby steps and giant steps to make that
number of units work.
What’s the point of this task?
It is important for students to recognise that the value we assign when we measure with a unit depends on
two things: the size of some attribute of the object we are measuring and the size of the unit. We might
use a lot of units because the object being measured is big or we might use a lot of units because the unit
is small. This task, by not fixing either the unit or the object, allows for both ideas to emerge.
In fact, students might choose to interpret this as an area question, rather than a length question. Those
students, too, might end up with larger numbers since they are counting steps in two dimensions and not
just one.
Baby Steps and Giant Steps Measurement