I am a huge fan of these dimensional analysis shape cards that were created by Kathryn Freed to introduce students to the concept of converting units. I have used them with both my physical science students and my chemistry students. To use them, I give students a starting shape and an ending shape. They have …
This cut and paste dimensional analysis activity makes the perfect introduction to dimensional analysis. I used this with my chemistry students with great success. It is available on Teachers Pay Teachers from Teacher Friendly Chemistry. Students have a bank of conversion factors to choose from. They cut out the ones they need for each problem …
To practice some real-life unit converting, I had my students go out in the lobby and measure their speed doing various activities such as walking, running, hopping, or skipping. Then, we converted our speed to miles/hour and compared our speed to the speeds of various animals. Here’s the animal speed chart I gave my students: …
This year, I decided to make converting units into a review skill in Algebra 1. I’m not sure if I’ll do this again. My main goal was to get students thinking about units. But, I feel like this lesson may have just added to the confusion of my students. Here’s the notes we did on …