Clip 5/11: Area and Perimeter Lesson Part 1D

Overview

Continuing their lesson on area and perimeter, Robin asks her 3rd-grade students to use their total area of 12 to create all the different perimeters they can find. Students return to their groups, discussing and debating their choices. Robin encourages students to “use their math words” when working with their partners. She circulates among the groups, asking how the visual representations differ, encouraging them to use “columns” and “rows” and to manipulate them to create diverse rectangular shapes to show the area of 12.

Teacher Commentary

Over my career, I've gotten more patient. I'm still open minded, but more so because the way I have to teach now is really very different from the way we started. The way I learned was basically memory, rote, just do it. There was no real reasoning behind it. So, I've had to learn how to visually see things because that's how some of the kids will see it, bringing in those manipulatives, seeing how they can manipulate things. I am hands-on. But I was more hands-on with paper and pencil versus hands on with the manipulatives, so bringing that part in was different. “How can I make it if I'm using square tiles? How can I make this make sense? Why are we using them? What are the conversations that they have to have with each other?”