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Top 10 Tips for Teaching the Metric System

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Apr 26, 2023

Top 10 Tips for Teaching the Metric System

Roger Clifton on October 20, 2022 5:13 AM

Roger Clifton on October 20, 2022 5:13 AM

Frequently the teacher or the textbook is still contaminated with the CGS system, inadequately converted to SI. It would help if the teacher converted all his/her own constants by rote before speaking to his/her students. After all, the teacher's speech becomes the students' thinking.

An upper gradeschool science class could start with a repeated chant, "kilo, mega, giga" then "milli, micro, nano". With this chant echoing as a reference, students subsequently know immediately in which ballpark a quoted quantity belongs.

An upper school STEM class would also benefit with an extended chant, "kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa" and then, "milli, micro, nano, pico, femto, atto". Notice that these are geometric series in powers of 1000, and the CGS units, centi, deci, deka etc must not contaminate the chant.

I speak from experience of years of correcting freshmen, to relearn thinking in SI.