Off the top of my head I knew straight away that there are 100cm in 1m because that was what I was taught in primary school and most items in the house I would measure are generally in centimetres or metres.
(Larkin, 2011).
I knew that a millimetre is smaller than a centimetre, that a centimetre is smaller than a metre and that a metre is smaller than a kilometre. That did not necessarily mean that the kilometre from the question was the longest. I knew that I would have to work the …show more content…
Once I had refreshed my knowledge as discussed before step 1 I felt a lot more confident in how to do the conversions between metric measurements.
Step 1: In step 1 I knew from researching online that multiplication is used to convert from larger to smaller units based on how many smaller units make up one larger unit (BBC, 2014). Likewise, in step 2 and step 3 I discovered the opposite needed to be done for smaller to larger units using division (BBC, 2014). Step 4 consisted of comparing the converted figures to assess which was the longest. To determine this knowledge and understanding of decimal numbers and place value was required (MathsIsFun, 2015).
Looking at the question I didn’t know the answer straight away but knew that if I converted the metric units of measurements that I could work out the correct answer. I had to refresh my skills in converting units of measurement to remind myself how to convert between the different units of