Measurement
In Year 5, measuring becomes much more about the relationships between units than about reading off a single tool. Children convert between metric units, including answers that land on a decimal, and they learn the rough links between metric and imperial measures, so a quantity can be expressed sensibly in more than one way. None of it is as daunting as it sounds: it all rests on knowing how many small units fit inside a bigger one.
Practise Measurement
Have a guess, even if you're not sure. Get one wrong and we'll show you why, so every miss is a chance to learn.
Timed practice
The same practice, just with a gentle clock. Pick a length and see how many you can answer.
Good to know
Units that go together
Each card shows a swap: how many small units fit inside one bigger one.
For grown-ups
Measurement is where number sense meets the real world, so this is the year it starts to stretch across topics. Calculating the perimeter of composite shapes and the area of rectangles leans on multiplication and decimals, while estimating the area of irregular shapes and the volume of cuboids builds a feel for size that pure arithmetic cannot give. Solving problems about money, measure and time asks children to choose the right operation for themselves, and that habit of picking units, converting them and sense-checking the answer is exactly the reasoning they will rely on across secondary maths and science.
What is in this topic
- Converting metric units, and metric to imperial equivalents
- Perimeter of composite shapes, and area of rectangles
- Estimating the area of irregular shapes and the volume of cuboids
- Reading scales and measuring jugs
- Money, measure and time problems
How to help at home
Conversion clicks into place when it is tied to things your child can see and hold, not learned as a list of rules. A few minutes spotting units around the house, kept relaxed and curious, builds far more confidence than a long worksheet session.
- Make the swaps physical. Holding a 2 litre bottle, ask how many millilitres that is: times by 1000 to get 2000 ml, then pour 750 ml out and work out that 750 ml is 0.75 of a litre.
- Year 5 also meets the rough links to the old imperial units, so a few are handy to know: 5 miles is about 8 km, 1 kg is about 2 pounds, and 1 litre is nearly 2 pints.
- Always say which way you are going. Going to a smaller unit you multiply, going to a bigger unit you divide: 1.2 km becomes 1200 m (times 1000), while 4500 m becomes 4.5 km (divide 1000).
- Practise perimeter on real rectangles. For a table 1.5 m by 0.8 m, add the four sides, 1.5 + 0.8 + 1.5 + 0.8, to get 4.6 m, and remind them area is the two different sides multiplied, 1.5 x 0.8 = 1.2 square metres.
Where children get stuck
The most common slip is multiplying when they should divide, or the other way round, so 2500 m turns into 2500000 km instead of 2.5 km. The fix is to pause and ask a sense-check first: a kilometre is bigger than a metre, so the number of kilometres must be smaller, which tells you to divide 2500 by 1000 to get 2.5 km.
The other frequent wobble is losing track of the decimal point and the place value behind it, reading 1.75 kg as if the 75 were just 75 grams. Anchor it to the card: 1 kg is 1000 g, so 1.75 kg is 1.75 lots of 1000, which is 1750 g, not 75.