Skills Covered

How to Use This Pack

Five pages on changing units inside one system, customary or metric. Every page starts with a conversion key. Page 1 fills in tables for yards, feet, and inches and for meters, centimeters, and millimeters, then writes lengths such as 4 ft 9 in. in the smaller unit and 50 in. as 4 ft 2 in. Page 2 fills in a table of gallons, quarts, pints, and cups and tables of pounds, ounces, and tons, then compares amounts such as 2 tons and 4,500 lb. Page 3 writes metric amounts with decimals (450 m = 0.45 km) and customary amounts with fractions (20 oz = 1 1/4 lb). Page 4 works one two-step word problem as an example, then has five more with a line for each step: change the units, then add, subtract, multiply, or divide. Page 5 works a recipe problem as an example, then has four multi-step problems (a fence, a road trip, a box with a weight limit, and ribbon) with room to show the work.

In the Classroom

Before page 1, ask whether the number gets bigger or smaller when a length is written in a smaller unit, and why. On page 3, connect metric units to place value: centimeters to meters is dividing by 100, so the digits move two places. Work the example on page 4 together and name the two steps out loud before students start.

At Home

Read labels in the kitchen together: a 1.5 L bottle, a 5 lb bag of flour, a half gallon of milk. Ask your child to say each amount in another unit, such as 1,500 mL or 80 ounces, and to check with the key on the worksheet.

Tips for Success

• To change to a smaller unit, multiply: there are more of the small units
• To change to a bigger unit, divide: there are fewer of the big units
• Metric units go by 10, 100, and 1,000, so the decimal point moves
• Change both amounts to the same unit before you compare, add, or subtract
• Write the unit with every answer, and check that it makes sense