Finding Area – Classroom Exercises
Area is All Around Us! Simple Geometry Classroom Activities
One challenge that students often face is realizing that math DOES actually relate to the real world and that they will actually use the information they are learning at some point in their life. Area happens to be one of those topics that students struggle to understand the reasoning behind. Before introducing the topic of area, you may want to ask your students some engaging questions such as: “If you wanted to put new tile down on the floor, how would you know how much to buy?” or “If you wanted to put wallpaper on the walls of the classroom, how much wallpaper would you buy?”. These questions will be sure to get them thinking about how to calculate these answers.
After asking some engaging questions to get students brainstorming about area, hopefully they will start to see the importance of Area and how people use area everyday for real life jobs. They will recognize that they would have to know how much space the floor covers and how much space (area) the wall covers. For this reason, they will then need to know how to calculate the area of a space.
Area can be defined as the measurement of space on the surface of a two dimensional shape or as the measurement of square units on the surface of a shape. There are two main ways to solve area problems. Depending on the problem and the model given, you will either count square units or you will use the formula for area which states that area is equal to the length multiplied by the width of a shape.
The purpose of this activity will be to introduce students to calculating basic area problems by counting square units.
In this activity students will meet the following objectives:
- Recognize that area is an attribute of plane figures
- Square units can measure area but they may not have any gaps or overlapping square units
- Calculate area by adding square units
Activity Instructions: The attached pages will provide students with practice for calculating the area of shapes using square units. Once they have mastered this skill, they will then be able to create a dream house using grid paper.
Name: _______________________
1. Area = _________ Square Units
2. Area = _________ Square Units
3. Area = _________ Square Units
4. Area = _________ Square Units
5. Area = _________ Square Units
6. Area = _________ Square Units
7. Area = _________ Square Units
8. Area = _________ Square Units
9. Area = _________ Square Units
10. Area = _________ Square Units
11. Area = _________ Square Units
12. Area = _________ Square Units
13. Area = _________ Square Units
14. Area = _________ Square Units
15. Area = _________ Square Units
DREAM HOUSE
Directions: Using the grid paper below, draw your dream house and then calculate the total area!
Name of Room |
Area in Square Units |
| Living Room | |
| Kitchen | |
| Dining Room | |
| Family Room | |
| Bedroom #1 | |
| Bedroom #2 | |
| Bedroom #3 | |
| Bathroom #1 | |
| Bathroom #2 | |
| Game Room | |
DREAM HOUSE DATA
Use the space below to calculate the total area of your dream house