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By Aphrodite

Hi therek
I had fun reading all the ideas and about the frustrations of teaching metrics. I teach 8th grade and use the staircase and the Metric Street USA. Especially the latter. I like it better, too because it's in
a straight line. Unit(meter, Liter, gram) is in the middle and to the left the units get larger, to the right they get smaller so they learn to convert by moving the decimal point to the left or the the right so many places. They understand that they are dividing or multiplying by 10 each time because I tell them that each place is: 10x10x10, etc. They also learn that when changing

from a large unit to a smaller unit they multiply (end up with larger number)because it is like emptying a large box containing a lot os smaller boxes and vise versa when going from a small unit to a large unit. They seem to enjoy my examples and they all understand it. I also use the acronym king hector devoured more delicious cookies & milk.