Indirect Measurement Word Problems Worksheets
How do you approach indirect length word problems? To understand how you can solve problems that use indirect length, you will need to imagine a few scenarios. For example, Jean and Ellie are studying science in the library. They were looking at pictures of animals from the past and present. They were interested in checking the heights of three animals, a dog, a kangaroo, and a dinosaur. They wanted to find out the tallest and the shortest animal between the three. In this problem, Jean and Ellie will cut out the pictures of Dinosaur, Kangaroo, and Dog one by one. The word tallest will be used for identifying which of these animals is the biggest. The word smallest will tell us which animal has the shortest height. Now let us look at those three animals; you can see that the Dinosaur is the tallest among the three. So, Jean and Ellie wrote, "the tallest animal" below the Dinosaur's picture. The smallest animal in the list is the dog, so Jean and Ellie wrote "The shortest animal" below its picture. The kangaroo is lying in the middle with its height greater than the dog's height and being shorter than the dinosaur. These worksheets help students find information about measures using other known measures that are present.
Aligned Standard: Grade 1 Measurement - 1.MD.1
- The Height of Animals Step-by-step Lesson- Not every animal is the same height. Compare dogs to dinosaurs.
- Height Comparison Guided Lesson - Compare balls, turn signals, and buildings.
- Long Winded Guided Lesson Explanation - I have to admit that I did get a little long winded with this one.
- Length Based Word Problems - Answer all the metric based word problems that involve length.
- Match Length Sentence Based Problems - Match the sentence based problems to the numbers they generate.
- Answer Keys - These are for all the unlocked materials above.
Guided Lessons
I made a series of progressions in each lesson that builds upon the next skill. So it would serve you well to do these in the order that they appear.
- Indirect Length with Robots Guided Lesson 1- How many blocks long is the robot? It helps to extend the line.
- Describing Measurements Guided Lesson 2- What is the length of each thing below? Use the boxes as a guide. This is a practical form of measuring that you will see regularly.
- Indirect Length Measurement Guided Lesson 3- Use the numbers 4, 5, 6 to describe the length each individual below.
- Who Weighs Less Guided Lesson 4- Circle the item that weighs less in each column. They are pretty well thought out for you.
- Length of a Wave Word Problem Guided Lesson 5- How many blocks high is the length of the wave?
Practice Worksheets
I think I exhausted every possible way to question or answer this topic.
- Indirect Length Measuring Objects Horizontally Worksheet- How many horizontal boxes long is each object below?
- Label Length and Weight Worksheet- The measurements of each individual are mentioned in the box. Identify which is the weight and which is the height of each and write below.
- Reorder Objects Lesson- Write the numbers 1, 2, and 3 to order the objects from heaviest to lightest.
- Visual Unit Length Step by Step Lesson- Compare the length of soldier with height of the boxes. Observe the height of soldier in respect of number of boxes. It is a good idea to draw a line from the top and bottom of the soldier to the box units.
- Indirect Length Measuring Objects Vertically Worksheet- Write the number of vertical boxes high that each object is below. Take a pencil or pen and mark the top or bottom of each object as a reference point to work off of.
- Who Weighs Less Practice Worksheet- Find the item that weighs less in each row. This works on the concepts of groups. Each of the objects has a similarity of sorts.
How to Perform This Skill
Some of the problems in this section will provide you with a reference measurement key or standard of some kind to allow you to compare each of the items that it presents you with. The basic question is which of the items is the smallest and which is the tallest. You may also be asked to order the measures of the items. This involves a quick measure comparison. The other types of problems require you to have some background knowledge about each of items. An example may be which is large a tennis ball or basketball?
We will take time to walk you through solving a basic indirect measurement problem below. Take a look at these skyscrapers and order them by height.
Example Problem: Refer to the images of the 3 buildings below. Using the red boxes to the left as a point of reference, order these building from tallest to shortest.
Step 1: The first things we want to do is to find out the starting and ending measure for the top and the bottom of each building. Refer to the lines that we have drawn on the diagram below. The green line shows the bottom of all 3 buildings which is the same for all three. The tallest building will have their top line be the furthest distance away from this line. The shortest building will have their top line closest to the green line.
Step 2: In this case, we can see that the tallest building is the building located to the right, which is shown with the black top line. The shortest building is found in the middle represented by the yellow line which is closest to that bottom green line. The building on the left is found somewhere in between as we can see with the blue line. Using numbers, we will represent the tallest with a 1 and the shortest with a 3. You can see this same building trio ordered by height below.
