Invite students to share how they reasoned about the height of each stone tower. Ask others if they reached the same conclusions but reasoned differently, or if they reached different conclusions.
“Una pista dice que la torre de Tyler es 5 veces tan alta como la torre más baja. Sabemos que la torre de Tyler mide 4 pies y 2 pulgadas. ¿Es más fácil encontrar la altura de la torre más baja usando 4 pies y 2 pulgadas o usando 50 pulgadas? ¿Por qué?” // “One clue says that Tyler’s tower is 5 times as tall as the shortest tower. We know that Tyler’s tower is 4 feet 2 inches. Is it easier to find the height of the shortest tower using 4 feet 2 inches or using 50 inches? Why?” (The first uses two different units, so we’d have to divide 4 feet by 5 and 2 inches by 5, or think about what number multiplied by 5 gives 4 and 2. If we use inches, we’re dealing with one number that is clearly a multiple of 5.)
“¿Cómo decidieron si la torre de Elena es más alta o más baja que 6 pies? ¿Convirtieron los 6 pies a pulgadas, convirtieron la altura de la torre de Diego a pies o hicieron otra cosa?” // “How did you decide whether Elena’s tower is greater than 6 feet? Did you convert the 6 feet into inches, convert Diego’s tower into feet, or do something else?”
Record strategies. Highlight that while it is often helpful to express a larger unit in terms of a small unit, some problems can be reasoned without doing so.
