Take three hands-up answers on the door height, not open call-outs. Don't confirm which is right yet — hold the suspense for the stations. The one word to plant early is estimate: a sensible guess made before you measure.

Have a real ruler, metre stick, kitchen scales and a jug ready to hold up in turn.

Same two-step move every time: estimate aloud first, then measure.

Desk: lay ruler, line zero with one end, read far end, about 60 cm, centimetres because a desk is small enough for a ruler. Common slip is reading from the wrong end.

Yard: too long for a ruler, so walk it out in paces. A pace is not a metre. Model the rename slowly and write it up: 10 paces, each about 50 cm, is 500 cm; 100 cm in a metre so 500 cm is about 5 m. Pupils need this exact bridge at Station 4.

Draw out that desk and yard are both length, but the yard is much bigger so it needs a bigger unit and a different method.

Schoolbag: ask why we can't use a ruler here; let a pupil say weight isn't a length. Put it on the scale, read the needle, in kilograms because it's heavy.

Bottle: the amount it holds is its capacity. Pour into the jug, read at the water line with eye level, not from above, in millilitres.

Close: four things, and each got a sensible unit and tool.

This round is for talking it through together — pupils take turns at the board and the class agrees or corrects out loud.

Fill the shared table on the IWB one row at a time using the data-collection activity: a pupil states the estimate, the class agrees the unit and instrument, a pupil enters the measured value with its unit, then the whole class works out the gap aloud before the next row. Reconcile any disagreement about the unit before entering the number. Four rows, each with its gap, is a full 7 minutes — keep it moving.

These are the practice questions — real objects circulate around the room (or sit at stations) and pupils measure each one with their own instruments. Keep the pass-on rhythm brisk.

Set the four stations up before the lesson: a metre stick by the door, three loaded schoolbags on the floor, a jug plus a few candidate containers, and a clear stretch of yard (or corridor) to pace. Send groups of four around in order, roughly three to four minutes each. Circulate to catch the two classic slips: reading the metre stick from the wrong end, and reading the jug from above rather than at the water line. The stretch is station four — renaming paces into metres — so keep the strongest groups moving there.

Share-back: do not have every group read out all four measures — that overruns the beat. Sample just two or three groups here (one reading its door measure, one its bag order, one its yard rename), then carry the fuller discussion of whose estimates got closest into the next step.

• Station 1 (door): record as, for example, 1 m 95 cm — mind the leftover centimetres above the whole metre.
• Station 2 (bags): ordering, not exact grams — heft-then-check is fine if scales are scarce.
• Station 3 (1 litre): encourage a real guess before pouring, then check the water line.
• Station 4 (yard): pupils have the worked bridge from the board — 10 paces × about 50 cm = 500 cm = about 5 m. Help groups apply it to their own pace count.