Important mathematical ideas are central to growth studies. These include measurement and representing growth.
Measurement: Studies of growth provide an opportunity to introduce and explore important principles of measure such as identical units, tiling, gaps or overlaps when using measuring units, zero-point, and fractional units. It is important to design tasks that highlight these principles and provide children with many opportunities to understand them.
Representing Growth: During these lessons, students are introduced to qualitative studies of change over time. First, they compare plants directly. They are shown paper strips that serve as records of plant height on each measurement day, and are asked to make comparisons between heights on successive days. The students come to see that the amount of growth between days is the difference in lengths of the paper strips. Children notice how the paper strip displays model growth patterns for the plants-some plants grow quickly at the beginning of the life cycle, others grow more slowly at first, but more quickly later on. We move to quantitative studies of growth rate in the upper elementary grades.
