Mentor Texts for Every Skill in Your Measurement Unit

Use these mentor texts to teach measurement in your elementary math classroom. These books are great additions to lessons and activities for all of your measurement standards and skills. From telling time to distance and dimensions, capacity, volume, weight, counting money and graphing data. Your first, second, third, and fourth graders will love these books and so will you!

As a teacher, introducing the basics of measurement and data in elementary school can be daunting – but it doesn’t have to be! With the right tools and strategies, you can make understanding ideas like length, weight, and capacity easy for young children.

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This will be the first part of a 5-day blog series all about teaching Measurement and Data! From hands-on activities and manipulatives to technology-based approaches, there are lots of great ways to teach measurement and data so that your students acquire essential skills while having fun at the same time. In this first post of the series, we’ll explore mentor texts that will support you as you teach measurement and data in your elementary classroom.

Because the Measurement and Data standards cover so many skills, I am going to keep each of the blog posts organized in skill sections.

All books include affiliate links to Amazon.

Introduction to Measurement

measurement mentor texts for elementary math, first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade

This first set of books covers measurement as an overall topic. These are excellent tools for introducing measurement. Not only are they engaging and fun, but they use clear and simple terms and can help connect measurement to your students’ everyday lives.

All About Dimensions & Distance

Now, we can start breaking our measurement skills into categories. First up, distance and dimensions! These books will help your kiddos understand length, width, height, distance, perimeter, area, and volume. The best part about these books is that they provide so many examples of measurement in real-life scenarios. They cover measurement tools (standard and non-standard), examples, and step-by-step instructions.

Additionally, we have books to help with volume, weight, and capacity!

All About Time

Next up, we have time measurement! This can be a very tricky skill for young math learners. So, spending *time* with repeated practice and real-life scenarios is very beneficial. I love these books about time because they allow students to connect time measurements to their everyday lives. Thus, providing opportunities for additional practice even when students are not at school!

All About Money

Similarly, money measurement will require lots of practice! Use these books to get your students thinking about when and how they should be measuring money.

All About Graphing

Lastly, we have data and graphing. I, personally, love this measurement topic! These three books will help your students understand picture graphs, bar graphs, and data collection. Each of these can be used as a whole- or small-group activity, too.

Using Your Mentor Texts

We all know that mentor texts can be used as read-alouds, but how else should you be incorporating your skill-specific mentor texts? See some of my favorite ways below:

Whole-Group Activity- Make use of some of the “real-life measurement scenario” books as a whole-group/follow-along activity.
- For example- Have students tally or track the lemonade sales on their own bar/picture graph as your read Lemonade for Sale.
Small-Group Activity- Make use of some of the “real-life measurement scenario” books as a small-group/follow-along activity.
- For example-Use measuring cups (real or printable) to track the capacity of Ripley’s fish bowl while reading Room for Ripley.
Centers or Partner Activities- Have students use one of the books and hands-on manipulatives/tools to practice measurement.
- For example- Include Rodeo Time or Game Time at a math center with Judy clocks and recording sheets. Have students practice measuring the time from the book on their tools and record the measurements.
Independent & Partner Reading- Include the collection of books in a “Topic Books” section of your library. Make them available to students to read or re-read during independent and partner reading times.