Saturday, November 14, 2009

"Fun House": My research project grade 5 area & perimeter






My research project involves teaching 5th grade students area and perimeter, practice finding area and perimeter, and assessing their understanding of the concept with a project called "Building a Fun House". Below is my lesson plan:

5th grade Math Web Quest on Area & Perimeter
Objectives:
· Students understand and use appropriate tools and units for measuring triangles and quadrilaterals
· Students find the area of triangles and quadrilaterals
· Students find the perimeter of triangles and quadrilaterals
· Students find the area and perimeter of parallelograms
· Students use perimeter and area for real life math situations
Students know how to derive and use formulas:
A= L x W or for parallelograms A=B x H
P= 2(L+W)

Web Quest: Using Area and Perimeter to Design a Fun House

I. Unit work on area and perimeter (Scott Foresman Grade 5 Math)

II. Introduce project using webquest from Guilford County, NC (http://its.guilford.k12.nc.us/webquests/math.html) and assign students homework of measuring their bedroom and one other room in their house

III. Students will receive handout and checklist on this project and we will read the handout together. Handouts, check lists and blue prints will be collected at the end of each class period.

IV. Students will get laptops and do the Area Explorer, print their results then do Perimeter Explorer and print their results.

V. Students will use laptops to access Math Goodies-Perimeter, do exercises, print their work and go on to Math Goodies-Area, do the exercises and print the results.

VI. For an assessment of students’ knowledge, students will be given graph paper and instructions to draw a house with a perimeter of at least 900 feet and have a minimum of three rooms. Students will determine how much vinyl flooring or carpeting they will need to cover two rooms of their house. Measurements will be shown in the drawing of the rooms.

VII. Students will draw a fence around the yard and then determine how much fencing they need.

VIII. Students will turn in their printed results from the Area Explorer, Perimeter Explorer, Math Goodies-Perimeter, Math Goodies-Area, the blueprint of their house and their checklist.

IX. Students will be given a survey on this learning activity.

X. Students will be graded on neatness, following instructions, correct perimeter and area of their design, labels on measurements and effort.

Materials are provided for students to complete their projects.


Day 1: Students were given homework assignment to measure a bedroom and one other room in their home in feet.

The teacher of the class placed the web links on the classroom blog, allowing faster access to web links. Here are the blog links:

Classroom Websites
Fun House: Area: Link 1
Fun House: Perimeter: Link 2
Fun House: Review: Link 3
Fun House: Review: Link 4

Day 2: Students shared the measurements of two rooms in their homes. This activity is to give students an idea of the size of an average room in a house. The handouts were distributed to the students and we read it aloud together, allowing students to ask questions. The next task was to retrieve the laptops. Once all students had a laptop, logged in, they were directed to the class blog where they could click on the links for area and perimeter practice and review. We allowed 90 minutes on the laptops for students to practice and then complete the reviews and print their results.

Day 3: Students that did not finish with the web links are allowed to retrieve laptops to finish the activities. Students that are finished with web links are given graph paper and asked to draw four figures, giving area and perimeter of each. The students were given 30 minutes to accomplish this task; papers were returned to teacher's in-box.

Day 4: Students are given their packets with the checklist and graph paper to begin drawing their fun house. The teacher and I used an overhead to demonstrate how to draw blueprint for a small house on graph paper. The graph paper given to students is 1cm blocks, so we decided to scale 1 cm = 10 ft. Students then started their Fun House blueprints. We allotted 30 minutes for today's activity.
Day 5, 6, 7, 8: Students are given their packets and allowed to work on their blue prints for approximately 20 to 30 minutes each day. Once students have completed the blueprint, the perimeter is checked by teacher as is the area of the two rooms to have carpet or vinyl flooring. Next students are to start the drawing of the front of their house. One change: Day 5 we decided that students did not have to do the fence around the yard. After day 8 of working in class on this project, we announced that student's had been given all the class time we could afford to give; projects will have to be finished during recess or at home.

Pictures of students working on projects and their projects will be posted later as will the survey and the survey results.

No comments:

Post a Comment