Teaching Measuring Parts of the Body to ESL kids

Below are a few useful teaching points and ideas taken from our free Measuring Parts of the Body lesson plan.

Teaching points / tips

Here are a few fun activities you can do in your lesson based on the measuring parts of the body theme:

1. Review vocab for body and numbers

Before teaching this lesson you will need to have taught our body lesson  as well us numbers up to 150. Do some review activities and games for these themes.

2. Model how to measure

Have everyone sit down, facing the board. Hold out your arm and take a tape measure or ruler. Attempt to measure your arm but make it obvious that it is too difficult to do by yourself. Then ask for a volunteer to help you. Get your volunteer to measure your arm and ask “How long is my arm?”. Elicit the number and then teach the word “centimeters”. Write on the board “My arms are (73) cm long”.

Then ask for another volunteer to help you measure your hair and write the sentence on the board (e.g. “My hair is 20 cm long”). Continue with different volunteers helping to measure the following parts of your body.

• full body height (I am ___ cm tall)
• hair (My hair is ___ cm long)
• arms (My arms are ___ cm long)
• nose (My nose is ___ cm long)
• hands (My hands are ___ cm long)
• legs (My legs are ___ cm long)
• feet (My feet are ___ cm long)

By the end you should have 7 sentences written on the board (as shown above).  Have everyone copy the sentences into their notebooks (or give our our Measuring worksheet).

3. Pairs measure each other

Put everyone in pairs. Pairs work together to measure each other and fill in the blanks in the sentences in their notebooks (or their measuring worksheets). Encourage everyone to say the measurements rather than just showing on the ruler or tape measure. Also encourage the use of structures, such as (write on the board):

• “How tall am I?”
• “How long is my …?”
• “You are … cm tall”
• “Your … is/are … cm long”

4. Play “Compare Results Line Up”

Now that everyone has completed their measurements we are going to find out who in the class is the tallest, shortest, has the longest and shortest body parts … in a fun ‘line-up’ game.

Tell your class they have to stand in a line with the tallest at one end and the shortest at the other end (and everyone else standing in order of height between). This is quite easy to do by sight, so your students should be able to do this without referring to their worksheets. Get them to do it as quickly as possible and set a time limit (e.g. 30 seconds on a timer or stop watch). Then write on the board (under the title “Class Measurements”):

Mika is the tallest.
Luis is the shortest.

Next, tell everyone to arrange themselves in terms of foot size … this is not so easy to do by sight, so everyone will have to work together using their worksheets to determine the correct order. Again, give a time limit (e.g. 1 minute). Then write on the board:

Hugo has the longest feet.
Ana has the shortest feet.

Continue with all of the other measurements on the worksheet, writing up the results on the board.

Optional Measuring Activity:

If you have time, you can get your students to measure things in the classroom and write their results down on the board. Give each pair a few items to find and measure, so that each pair measures different things. Each pair writes the results onto the board as they measure each item, such as:

• A book is 20 cm long
• The window is 200 cm long
• My bag is 45 cm long
• etc.