Real-Life Measurement Story Problems

We have been working on our measurement unit over the last week or two in second grade.  One of our standards includes real-life story problems involving measurement situations.  So, for our weekly story problems (I love doing story problems every Friday!) we focused on real life problems involving distance.

On Fridays, I will often have two story problems for the kids to solve. The first one, we go over, and a few students share out. The second story problem is a similar type, but different numbers and that one I use for a formative grade.

I have to brag about our story problem from this past Friday! My kids rocked it! It combined measurement and multiplication.  I have four different strategies to show you and every child was able to explain what they did and why they chose that strategy! It was definitely a proud teacher moment...

Here's the problem: Jenny ran 6 miles each day for 14 days. How many miles did she run?

Cole decided to draw out the miles for each day. I love how he labeled each day first and then put 6 dots under each day to represent the six miles. He then counted the dots to get the answer of 84 miles.

Keegan used skip counting to solve the problem. She skip counted by 6, 14 times to end up with 84. She was also able to write the multiplication equation to match!

Carter used repeated addition strategy to solve the problem.  He added 6, 14 times.  As you can see he kept adding down, until he reached the final answer of 84 miles.

I love what Drake did to solve it! He explained it perfectly, but didn't write down each step which is why you can tell I did for him with the green marker. He used a combination of break apart and repeated addition! He first added 6, 5 times for the five days and got 30 miles.  He knew that five more days would also be 30 more miles - which is where the 30+30 came from and that would get him to 10 days. Then, he did something that I was so proud of! He knew that if he added another 30 miles that would be another 5 days, but that would mean she ran for 15 days and she was only supposed to run for 14 days. So, Drake knew that 5 days would be 30 and if you took a day off, that would be 24 miles, which is where he got the final number in the 30+30+24.  I love how he broke it down and compensated to make the numbers work for him! Amazing!!!

Do you use story problems a lot in your math class? Comment below with how often and any ideas you have!