Becoming Mathematicians....Amazing Ribbon Worms!

As we study earthworms in the garden system, we came across the fact that there are many species of worms. One that amazed us was the 115 foot green ribbon worm that lives on the ocean floor.  Here is a video that I found to show the children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kj0JkkdAM4

So I decided this was a great opportunity to work out a math problem.  

We measured the average student in our class and and found out that most first graders are around 4 feet tall.  I asked them to use this as a measurement.  They would not be given any other measuring tools. (non-standard measurement:  Common Core standard:)

 Next I gave them time to talk at their table groups about how we could work this out using our bodies.
(Communication, Critical Thinking, Collaboration!) 
We came together and debriefed as a whole group and 3 students came up with the idea of laying our bodies end to end to see how long a ribbon worm might be.

So the kids laid down on the carpet end to end...and they were shocked that they wrapped around the room with a bit of overlap! 

Then we had the task of figuring out how to solve how long we were as a crew and were we as long as a ribbon worm?

 Here is the thinking of one of my students...she broke the 4's down into 2's because she knows how to count by 2's.  Wow.  She came up with 96 ft.

Then I showed the work of another child's thinking which looked like this.  He also got 96 feet long.
We were giddy by this time...the room buzzing with learning.  We were so energized by doing math together!

We ran out of time but tomorrow we will finish by figuring out the difference between 115 ft and 96 ft. to determine how much longer we needed to be to be as long as a ribbon worm.  How many more kids would we need in the room to reach this length?