This week, we began learning about area! The students learned that area is the amount of space inside a shape, exploring this idea using hands-on materials and visual models.
To start, students measured area by using square units and tiling. They covered shapes completely with squares and counted how many squares were needed to fill the space. This helped students understand that area is measured in square units and that there should be no gaps or overlaps when measuring.
Students compared different shapes and discovered that shapes can have the same area even if they look very different. Using tiles allowed students to explain their thinking and see how area stays the same even when shapes are rearranged.
Next, we will connect this concrete learning to a more efficient strategy by introducing the formula base × height for finding the area of rectangles. This will help students move from counting individual squares to using multiplication as a faster and more accurate way to calculate area.
