What is Weight? - The Complete Series (5 lessons)

These fun and informative lesson each include a detailed lesson plan, engaging slides, activity ideas, differentiated worksheets and other useful resources to make your Maths planning for this scheme of work a doddle! All you need to do is provide the scales...

The first lesson in this series begins by thinking about the units of measurement that are used to measure weight and, more specifically, the relationship between grams and kilograms. The lesson then goes on to discuss whether grams or kilograms would be better for weighing various objects before giving your class the chance to estimate the weight of various objects.

This lesson develops their estimation skills and then gives them the chance to see how close their estimates of the weights of different objects were by using scales to find out their actual weight. It also challenges children to find objects to match a target weight, such as 1 kg.

This lesson again gives your class the chance to estimate the weight of objects and then check their estimates using weighing scales, but this time the focus is on books. How does the weight of a novel compare with the weight of an information book? Today is their chance to find out as their refine their estimation skills.

Today your class will be put in charge of a Post Office van as they assess how many packages of various weights they can load on the van at once without the van going over its weight limit! After introducing the idea in the slides, the children will then be able to work on problems of varying levels of difficulty independently or in small groups.

The final lesson in this series takes the work covered in the previous lesson a step further as they work out how much various parcels would cost to post. This not only challenges their knowledge of weights but also encourages their problem-solving skills as they use doubling, halving and other operations to solve problems. It also provides the opportunity for your class to create their own post office and design a price list for their parcels!