Measure and Chart

Printing notes

It has 12 problems on 2 pages, which is the density we use for 2nd grade. The answer key is a separate page.

Two styles, and the difference is ink. The default is the designed sheet: Measure and Chart with its character in the header, the trick box that names the method before you start, named sections, rounded problem boxes and one accent colour taken from that character's own palette. The colour is spent on outlines, labels and a light section band — never flooded behind the maths — so it is still cheap, and it still reads on a black-and-white printer. Plain black and white strips the decoration back to hairlines: same problems, same trick box, the least ink a printer can use.

The sheet changes with age. Kindergarten and grade 1 get the biggest type, the fewest problems, the character speaking the trick, and stars to colour in — and always one page, because a young child should be able to finish it. Grades 2 and 3 get named sections and a self-check strip. Grades 4 and 5 get a compact strategy note, a denser grid and a challenge instead of the stars, because by then a row of stars reads as a sheet meant for somebody younger.

Length is chosen, not left to chance. Six of the forty-one sheets are two pages; the rest are one. Every page was measured in a real browser, and the rule is that no sheet may be a page and a bit — if the last page would not be at least four fifths full, the problem count comes down instead.

Text size. Large print drops to fewer, bigger problems per row. Extra spacing adds line height, letter spacing and wider gutters, and removes italics — the layout usually recommended for dyslexic readers. Both are the same problems, so a sheet can be reprinted in either without losing the seed.

The first problem is worked for you, with the next one deliberately almost identical, so the method is visible before it has to be used.

The mixed review sheet is a different thing: eight problems, shuffled so that no two next to each other need the same method. In a randomised trial of 787 students, sheets shuffled that way scored 61% against 38% for the same problems grouped by type, on a test a month later. Use the practice sheet while a skill is new, and the review sheet a week or two afterwards.