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Additional Activities
• Have students find the distance from their classroom door to each exit. Which is
nearest? Which is farthest away? (Note: If students encounter stairs, ask them
how they can measure the horizontal distance of the staircase. One method
would be to measure the depth—not height—of each stair and multiply that by
the number of stairs.)
• Have students find the distance from their classroom door to other places on
campus: the media center, the main office, the gym, and so forth.
Additional Outdoor Activities
• How far can students throw, hit,or kick a baseball or field hockey ball?
• Have students find the perimeter of the school property.
Extension and Enrichment
• Invite students to create graphs or charts representing their findings.
• Invite students to create scale drawings of the school or grounds based on their
findings.
Trundle WheelOrienteering
In this activity, studentswill follow a trail of markers to uncover a secret password.
In preparation for this activity, you will need to create a list of clues and a series of
"markers" to place at points throughout the playground. Youwill also need to select
a secret password the students will discover. Pick yourpassword based on how
many markers you want students to travel to and based on a word the students will
be excited to discover. A favorite character from a book the class has been reading
works wonderfully.
For markers, you may use bottles, milk cartons, or other items that can be weighted
down so they won’t blow away or move. Each marker will be given a different
letter. As students travel from one marker to the next,they will write down the
letter of each marker to spell the secret password.
Tocreate the list of clues, simply tell students how far away (in meters) the next
marker is. On the day of the activity, lay out the markers based on this list of clues.
Make sure one marker can be the answer to a clue.
Give students a list of clues and show the students where to start. Students will
read the first clue to find the first distance. They will estimate which marker they
believe is that distance away and will use the trundle wheel to verify their guess. If
they are correct, they will record the letter of the marker. Studentswill continue
from marker to marker until they have finished the course and found the secret
password.