Description
What our Measuring Areas in Square Units lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Measuring Areas in Square Units teaches students about unit squares and how they can be used to measure area. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to measure areas by counting unit squares. This lesson is for students in 3rd 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.
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. One optional adjustment to the lesson activity is to have students work with a partner to explain each other’s area and strategy during the activity. For an additional activity, you could give your students a set of areas to complete and ask them to draw their rectangle and provide a written explanation. You could also have your students use construction paper squares to create a poster of different areas. They could also use various laminated rectangles and find the area using a standard square unit. You could also have your students use grid paper to draw areas. Finally, if you have more advanced students, you could have them begin to think about how a half a unit or a triangle may be counted.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
MEASURING AREA IN SQUARE UNITS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Measuring Area in Square Units
The Measuring Area in Square Units lesson plan includes three content pages. Area is the amount of space inside of a shape. We measure area by finding the number of unit squares it takes to cover the shape or surface.
The lesson includes a helpful example to illustrate how to find area using square units. It shows a rectangles divided into equal pieces. Each piece represents a single square unit. First, we need to make sure that none of the square units have gaps or overlap. We then count the number of square units. In this example, the area of the figure is eight square units.
Sometimes, we need to find the area of an irregular shape. The lesson includes an example using a figure with an L-shape. Like with a regular shape, to find the area, we simply count the number of unit squares.
Other times, we need to find the area of an irregular shape where only parts of the unit squares cover it. To find the area of a shape like this, we count the triangle pieces as fractional parts of a unit square. The lesson includes an example. We first find the whole unit squares. In the example, there are 12 whole unit squares. Next, we count the number of triangles. In the example, there are 6 triangles and each triangle is a 1/2 of a unit square. We multiply 1/2 by 6 to get a total of 3 additional unit squares. We add 12 + 3 to get a total area of 15 square units.
Remember that you can find the area of both regular and irregular shapes using the unit square!
MEASURING AREA IN SQUARE UNITS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Measuring Area in Square Units 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.
BUILDING SHAPES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
The activity worksheet asks students to use square manipulatives to build shapes with different areas. For example, they might be asked to build a shape with an area of 10 square units. For each shape, they will explain their strategy for deciding how to build them.
COUNTING SQUARES PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to count the squares shown on the worksheet to find the area of each figure. They will write down both the number of unit squares and the total area in square centimeters for each figure. Next, they will create their own shapes with specific areas.
MEASURING AREA IN SQUARE UNITS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will first circle the rectangle with the greatest area, assuming each unit is the same measurement. They will also explain why their answer is correct. Next, they will look at pictures of floor tiles and determine the measurements of each floor.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. 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.
