Measurement Song and Lesson for Conversions

My students are having such trouble with measurement. Particularly changing units, like feet to yards, etc. I teach fifth grade and it is my first year. I am stumped and all of the things I’ve tried aren’t working. Do you have any suggestions for a rookie?
My first suggestion is to make your question known to your staff. Do not be embarrassed to ask for help. Other teachers will not look down on you. Teachers love sharing ideas and teaching other teachers what they learned works for students.
When I taught fifth grade, I made up a song, sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy, to help the children with this very subject. The title is “The Mile Song.” You sing the song and write these words and numbers in a row on the board while the students write it on their paper as a key to help them answer the questions:
1760 (for the song, with the beats, we said “17” “60”)
Yards
3
Feet (and)
12
Inches
The song ends by the students adding “Going down you multiply, back up it is division” and some students drew arrows to remind them of that part of the key. Any time they had questions about conversion with these units, I had them sing and write this key at the top of their paper. Try it right now. Here are a couple of math problems and how to use the “key”:
1.Convert 15 yards to inches. The students look up at the key, and they see that in order to get from “yards” down to “inches” they will have to multiply (because “going down you multiply”) by 3, then by 12. So the children start with 15 x 3 = 45 (make sure to point out to them that this gets you to “feet” so they know how to use the chart), then 45 x 12 = 540. The answer is 540 inches.
2.How many yards is 72 inches? Again, use the key and remember the song so you know that when you go up the chart, it is division. In order to get from the word “inches” up to “yards” the kids know they have to divide by 12, then by 3. So you start with 72 ÷ 12 =6 and 6 ÷ 3 = 2. The answer is 2 yards.
3.How many inches are in 3 miles? Since it is “The Mile Song” you start at the top and go all the way down the chart. First you convert to yards, then feet, then you get inches. Try this on your own.

The students love creating their own “answer key” and it really works. Later, if they remember the song, they can always produce their own route to solving the problem. I used to have the children make up songs with me, sung to other favorite tunes, as a study method. I remember one of my student’s parents came to conferences that year saying their child absolutely loved “The Mile Song” and sung it all the time. In fact, when it was time for other tests, she would make up her own songs, sung to favorite tunes, to help her study. It is an excellent study tool. I used it a lot.

Learning Multiplication Table Tricks for 9's

Question: My child cannot get his nine times tables down for the life of him. He needs to pass this last test and he is so hung up on this series that he has just freezes when the test comes. This cannot be unheard of with all of the pressure we place on kids to memorize things. We are almost to June and he wants to do this before school is out. How do you help a child give up a giant monkey he has placed on his back?

Answer:

Children often enjoy learning the secrets behind numbers and your son needs to relax a little and have some fun. Here are some fun tricks you can do with him:

First, have him make two columns of numbers right next to each other. Now have him write the numbers from 0-9 going down one column. In the adjoining column, have him write the numbers descending from 9-0 (making sure the two columns line up together). When he looks at the two columns now, he is looking at all of the answers in order to the nine times tables. Pretty cool, right? Now have him look at each of the answers in rows. Each row is not only an answer to the multiplication problem, each number in each row adds up to nine. 0+9=9, 1+8=9, 2+7=9, 3+6=9, etc. There is another fallback. Whenever you have a number multiplied by nine, the answer begins with one less than the number being multiplied. For instance, 9x5 will begin with 4 (45) and 9x6 will begin with 5 (54). Once the kids see this and then remember that each digit in the answer will add up to nine and can be found in the ascending and descending columns, it seems to fall into place.

Even if this sounds complicated in print, it is not difficult in practice. When I taught second and third grades I began with the 0 multiplication tables, then the 1’s, then the 9’s because they are fun and the students feel so accomplished in memorizing and understanding what is to them a large number for multiplication purposes. He’s done a lot of work in passing all of the other numbers, and nine is full of some of the fun and thinking that he will enjoy after all that rote memorization.