Math  /  2nd Grade  /  Unit 6: Customary Measurement, Shapes, and Telling Time

Customary Measurement, Shapes, and Telling Time

Students extend their measurement understanding to work with customary units, reason with shapes and their attributes, partition shapes into equal shares and describe them, and extend knowledge of time by reading and representing time to the nearest five minutes.

Math

Unit 6

2nd Grade

Unit Summary

In Unit 6, 2nd grade students revisit measurement concepts and skills as they apply them to customary units. After being introduced to the metric standard units centimeters and meters in Unit 3, students encounter inches and feet as another unit of length measurement in this unit. Throughout Topic A, students measure the lengths of objects in inches and draw lines that can be measured to the nearest inch. They use inch rulers and yardsticks as measuring tools to measure and estimate lengths in inches and in feet. Students also come to understand that when measuring an object with two different units of measure, the measurement value is relative to the size of the unit. For example, if a student were to measure a pencil in centimeters and then inches, they would reason that the higher valued measurement is centimeters since a centimeter is smaller than an inch and it therefore takes more of them to measure the same object. Similarly, to measure the same pencil, they would need fewer inches than centimeters. In this topic, students also apply their problem solving skills to solving one-step and two-step word problems involving customary measurement. 

In Topic B, students reason about shapes and their attributes. Building off their geometry work of previous grades, students begin by identifying defining attributes and classifying flat, closed-sided polygons. Throughout the topic, students will have opportunities to sort, identify, and draw shapes based on their number of sides, angles, and other defining attributes. They will be introduced to the terms quadrilateral, pentagon, and hexagon. As students build on their work of shapes, they also extend their work on partitioning shapes into equal shares and describing them. In first grade, students partitioned shapes into halves and quarters/fourths, and in second grade, their work builds on that learning to partition rectangles and circles into thirds, as well. Students will be able to see a whole as 2 halves, 3 thirds, or 4 fourths depending on the partition as they build their foundation for fraction work in third grade. 

Finally, in Topic C, students relate their knowledge of partitioning circles into halves and quarters to the telling of time to the nearest half and quarter hours before further diving into telling time to the nearest 5-minute increment. In first grade, students told time to the nearest hour and half hour. Combined with their earlier work with skip-counting by 5s, this will support students as they reason about the time shown on analog clocks and as they represent time on analog clock faces to the nearest 5 minutes. As student knowledge of telling time grows, they complete the unit by assigning a.m. and p.m. distinctions to time. This work forms the foundation for their third grade work with elapsed time. 

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Assessment

The following assessments accompany Unit 6.

Mid-Unit

Have students complete the Mid-Unit Assessment after Lesson 12.

Post-Unit

Use the resources below to assess student understanding of the unit content and action plan for future units.

Expanded Assessment Package

Use student data to drive instruction with an expanded suite of assessments. Unlock Mid-Unit Assessments and Answer Keys to help assess progress with unit content and inform your planning.

Unit Prep

Intellectual Prep

Intellectual Prep for All Units

  • Read and annotate "Unit Summary" and "Essential Understandings" portion of the unit plan. 
  • Do all the Target Tasks and annotate them with the "Unit Summary" and "Essential Understandings" in mind. 
  • Take the Post-Unit Assessment.

Unit-Specific Intellectual Prep

  • Read pp. 96–103 on Geometric Measurement and pp. 113–125 on Geometry in the Progressions.

  • Read the following table that includes models used in this unit.

Model Example
line plot

tape diagram

Armando buys 16 peppers for a barbecue. 7 of the peppers are red and the rest of the peppers are orange. How many orange peppers did Armando buy?

Essential Understandings

  • Standardized objects can be used to measure other objects by lining up the standardized units from end to end with no gaps, or with a standardized measuring tool (inch rulers and yardsticks) that includes markings of equal length. 
  • Lengths of objects can be measured using inches and feet as standard units of measurement. 
  • When measuring, the longer the unit used to measure, the fewer units it takes to span the length of the object, and the shorter the unit used to measure, the more units it takes to span the same length. The length of an object can be measured in inches and centimeters or inches and feet, and the relative value can be compared.
  • Shapes can be defined by their defining attributes that include the number of sides and angles. 
  • A cube is a special solid shape composed of 6 square faces. 
  • Circles and rectangles can be partitioned into equal halves, thirds, and fourths, and each partition can be described as one half, third, or fourth accordingly. The whole can be described as 2 halves, 3 thirds, and 4 fourths accordingly. 
  • Using the position of the hour and minute hands, students can tell time to the nearest 5-minute interval by using the hour hand to locate the hour and the minute hand to skip-count by 5s the minutes that have passed. 
  • Given particular context, a.m. or p.m. distinctions are given to time, as a.m. denotes events happening in the morning and p.m. denotes events happening in the afternoon and evening.

Vocabulary

Unit Vocabulary

analog clock

angle

cube

digital clock

edge

face

foot/feet

hexagon

inch/inches

partition

pentagon

quadrilateral

quarter till

quarter past

thirds

To see all the vocabulary for Unit 6, view our 2nd Grade Vocabulary Glossary.

Materials

  • Centimeter cubes (20 per student)

  • Square inch tiles (10 per student)
  • Cardstock (1 per student) — cut into 2" x 11" strips
  • Ruler (1 per student) — ensure the ruler has inches
  • Yardstick (1 per group of 4 students) — with painter's tape or masking tape, mark off 1 foot, 2 feet, and 3 feet respectively
  • Painter's tape — 1 roll
  • Optional: Measuring kit — include 6–7 items less than 12 inches long that can be measured to the nearest whole inch
  • String (1 per group) — 4 feet long
  • Clothesline clip (1 per group)
  • Index card (1 per student)
  • Scissors (1 per student)
  • Mini marshmallows (8 per student)
  • Toothpicks (12 per student)
  • Optional: Post-it notes (6 in all)
  • Optional: Square-sized paper (3 per student) – 8.5 x 8.5 in
  • Crayons (1 set per student) — yellow, green, blue, red, and orange
  • Teacher Gear Clock (1 for teacher)
  • Optional: Student Gear Clock (1 per student)
  • Clock Template (1 per student) — printed on cardstock
  • Brad (1 per student) 
  • A Typical Day Time Map (1 per student)
  • Schedule Mishap Template (1 per student)
  • Pattern blocks (at least 3 triangles, 3 squares per student)
  • Rectangle and Circle Partition Template (1 per student)

Unit Practice

Lesson Map

Topic A: Customary Measurement

Topic B: Shapes, Their Attributes, and Equal Shares

Topic C: Telling Time

Common Core Standards

Key

Major Cluster

Supporting Cluster

Additional Cluster

Core Standards

Geometry

  • 2.G.A.1 — Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces. Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes. Sizes are compared directly or visually, not compared by measuring.
  • 2.G.A.3 — Partition circles and rectangles into two, three, or four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, thirds, half of, a third of, etc., and describe the whole as two halves, three thirds, four fourths. Recognize that equal shares of identical wholes need not have the same shape.

Measurement and Data

  • 2.MD.A.1 — Measure the length of an object by selecting and using appropriate tools such as rulers, yardsticks, meter sticks, and measuring tapes.
  • 2.MD.A.2 — Measure the length of an object twice, using length units of different lengths for the two measurements; describe how the two measurements relate to the size of the unit chosen.
  • 2.MD.A.3 — Estimate lengths using units of inches, feet, centimeters, and meters.
  • 2.MD.B.5 — Use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve word problems involving lengths that are given in the same units, e.g., by using drawings (such as drawings of rulers) and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.
  • 2.MD.C.7 — Tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest five minutes, using a.m. and p.m.
  • 2.MD.D.9 — Generate measurement data by measuring lengths of several objects to the nearest whole unit, or by making repeated measurements of the same object. Show the measurements by making a line plot, where the horizontal scale is marked off in whole-number units.

Foundational Standards

Geometry

  • 1.G.A.1
  • 1.G.A.3

Measurement and Data

  • 1.MD.A.2
  • 1.MD.B.3

Operations and Algebraic Thinking

  • 1.OA.A.1

Future Standards

Measurement and Data

  • 3.MD.A.2
  • 3.MD.C.5
  • 3.MD.C.6
  • 4.MD.A.1

Number and Operations—Fractions

  • 3.NF.A.1

Standards for Mathematical Practice

  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP1 — Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP2 — Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP3 — Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP4 — Model with mathematics.

  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP5 — Use appropriate tools strategically.

  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP6 — Attend to precision.

  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP7 — Look for and make use of structure.

  • CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP8 — Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

Read Next

Customary Measurement, Shapes, and Telling Time
Lesson 1
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