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Gr. 3 Unit: 3.MD.C.5-7: Understand Concepts of Area and Relate Area to Multiplication and Addition

Lesson Seed C.5: Covering the Shapes

Essential Questions:

What is perimeter?

How does knowing the attributes of plane figures help find the perimeter of an identified plane figure?

What methods are used to measure perimeter/area?

How does knowing the attributes of plane figures help find the area of a figure?

How is area related to multiplication and addition?

What is the difference between area and perimeter?

How can the area of rectilinear figures be calculated?

Lesson Plans and Seeds

Lesson Plan C.7a: Using Tiling to Find Area

Lesson Seed C.5: Covering the Shapes

Lesson Seed C.7c: Using the Distributive Property to Find the Area

Lesson Seed C.7d: Area Rectilinear

Download Seeds, Plans, and Resources (zip)

Unit Overview

Content Emphasis By Clusters in Grade 3

Progressions from Common Core State Standards in Mathematics

Send Feedback to MSDE’s Mathematics Team

Lesson seeds are ideas that can be used to build a lesson aligned to the CCSS. Lesson seeds are not meant to be all-inclusive, nor are they substitutes for instruction. When developing lessons from these seeds, teachers must consider the needs of all learners. It is also important to build checkpoints into the lessons where appropriate formative assessment will inform a teachers instructional pacing and delivery.

Standard(s):

3.MD.C.5a: A square with side length 1 unit, called “a unit square,” is said to have “one square unit” of area, and can be used to measure area.

3.MD.C.5b: A plane figure which can be covered without gaps or overlaps by n unit squares is said to have an area of n square units.

Purpose/Big Idea:

With free exploration, students discover the definition of area as the measure of the space inside a region. They find that while many shapes can cover the region, there may be gaps, spaces, or overlapping. Or, if using various shapes, it may be difficult to describe how many of each will cover the region. This will lead to “Why are square units used most often to find the area of a region?

Materials:

Any combination of the following: Pattern Blocks, base ten blocks, dry beans of various sizes, Cuisenaire rods, square color tiles, circular discs

Shapes to Explore-OR- rectangles traced on paper for which square tiles would be the best measurement tool

Activity 1:

Give each groups or pair of students Resource Sheet 1: “Shapes to Explore” and a choice of objects with which to cover the figures.

Ask students to determine which shape takes the most material to cover?

Guiding Questions:

Students look at different times as they elapse on the clock in order to make generalizations about what they see.

Which material is the easiest to use to cover the space?

Which material has the fewest gaps, overlaps, or empty spaces?

Why does one group use more materials than another to cover the same shape?

How does the size of the material affect the amount of space covered and the amount of materials used?

What is the best shape to use, and why?

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Last Updated 3/10/2020 11:38 AM