Description
What our Area of Rectangles lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Area of Rectangles teaches students how to find the area of a rectangle using a specific formula. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to identify and use the formula for the area of a rectangle. This lesson is for students in 3rd grade and 4th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. The supplies you will need for this lesson are scissors and handouts. To prepare for this lesson ahead of time, you can pair students for the activity, gather the supplies, and copy the handouts.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. For the activity, you can have students use hands-on manipulatives instead of paper tiles. An optional addition to this activity is to have your students measure different objects in the classroom to find the area of various surfaces, like book covers, desk tops, and more. You can also hand out different sizes of paper to your students and have them measure and tile each sheet of paper to find the length, width, and area. Finally, you can discuss why learning how to find area is important.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. The lesson encourages teachers to use hands-on manipulatives for students to build squares and rectangles with. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
AREA OF RECTANGLES LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Area
The Area of Rectangles lesson plan includes three pages of content. The lesson begins by stating that every space has an area, whether that’s a classroom or a room in your house. All areas have a length, a width, and a height. This means that these areas are three-dimensional, because they have three dimensions (length, width, height). For two-dimensional figures, area only includes length and width. This is the kind of area we are usually talking about in mathematics. Area is the space inside a two-dimensional shape. You can also think of it as the amount of space that a specific shape covers. For example, your classroom floor likely takes up less space than the gym floor, meaning it has a smaller area.
This lesson teaches you how to find the area of rectangles and squares (which are just one specific type of rectangle). Squares have equal lengths and widths. For a rectangle, the length is the long side-to-side measurement and the width is the short measurement. For rectangles, the length and width are not equal. If they are equal, that means the shape is actually a square. We can measure length and width using inches, centimeters, feet, yards, miles, and more. If you measure something in inches, the area will be in square inches. If you measure it in yards, the area will be in square yards. The area of two-dimensional figures is always in square units.
Finding the Area of a Rectangle
Rectangles and squares have a length and a width. We find the area of these shapes by multiplying the length and the width. The lesson includes some helpful examples. The area of a rectangle that has a length of 7 units and a width of 4 units is 28 square units, because 7 x 4 = 28. The area of a square that has a length of 5 units and a width of 5 units is 25 square units, because 5 x 5 = 25.
The units can be inches, feet, centimeters, miles, meters, kilometers, or any other unit. If you know the area and either the length or the width of the rectangle, you can find the missing measurement by dividing the area by the known measurement. Area = length x width, length = area / width, and width = area / length.
AREA OF RECTANGLES LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Area of Rectangles lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
AREA OF RECTANGLES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
Students will work in pairs to complete the activity worksheet. Each pair will cut out different sized squares from the provided sheet of paper. They will use the chart on the second page to write down the lengths, widths, and areas of each square or rectangle, choosing whichever unit they’d like for the area. They will then determine the area of some special figures that they can create based on the examples on the worksheet.
Students can also work either alone or in larger groups if you’d prefer.
FIND THE AREA PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to find the area for each figure. Some of the figures include measurements.
DRAW A PICTURE HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will draw pictures for each question and find the area. They will then determine the area of a specific figure shown on the worksheet.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. No answer key is provided for the activity worksheet, as students will measure different sized squares and rectangles. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
