Curriculum placement
Grade 4. This describes the skill, not a learner estimate.
Converting to a smaller unit
Convert larger measurement units to smaller units
Problem types
- Rename with smaller units
- Rename customary units as smaller units
- Choose a reasonable customary unit
- Elapsed time that crosses an hour
- Complete a conversion table
- Rename a smaller unit as a larger unit
- Distance on a measurement line
- Choose a measuring tool
- Compare the sizes of units
- Convert through several units, then answer the story
- Select the equal customary measurements
- The reasonable measure or unit
- The object that matches a measure
- Hours, minutes and other time units
Builds on
- Multiplying with partial products
- Telling time to five minutes · Earlier idea
A clock converts 60 minutes into one hour, which is the same renaming of units used for other measures.
- Adding or subtracting 10 or 100 mentally · Useful idea
Converting between metric units multiplies or divides by 10, 100 or 1000, which is mental tens and hundreds.
- Measuring length with equal units · Earlier idea
Measuring with a smaller unit takes more of them. Converting units uses this fact with standard units.
Leads to
- Converting within one measurement system
- Choosing units and a sensible precision
- Finding elapsed time · See it applied
An elapsed time that crosses an hour is simpler when the hours are renamed as minutes: the same renaming of larger units as smaller ones lets the minutes be added and subtracted.
- Powers of 10 and place value · See it applied
Metric prefixes are powers of ten, so converting units is multiplying or dividing by a power of ten.
Related skills
- Mass and liquid volume · Related idea
Measuring mass and volume uses metric units. Renaming one metric unit as another multiplies or divides by ten, one hundred or one thousand.
- The standard multiplication algorithm · Shared foundations
Open the interactive map to explore lessons and skill connections.