Good afternoon!
We had a great day today. In Math, our Gr. 5 students have been examining rectangles that have the same perimeter but different area. This can be challenging to learn, and students often struggle at finding all the rectangles. A good problem solving strategy that we have been practicing is to make a graph/table.
Eg.
Paul had 16 m of fencing to put around his square flower garden.
a) What are the side lengths of Paul’s garden? How do you know?
b) What is the area of his garden?
Step 1: Create a graph/table.
| Rectangle # | Length (m) | Width (m) | Perimeter (m) | Area (m2) |
| 1 | 1 | 7 | 16 | 7 |
| 2 | 2 | 6 | 16 | 12 |
| 3 | 3 | 5 | 16 | 15 |
| 4 | 4 | 4 | 16 | 16 |
| 5 | 5 | 3 | 16 | 15 |
| 6 | 6 | 2 | 16 | 12 |
| 7 | 7 | 1 | 16 | 7 |
a) Paul’s garden is 4 m by 4 m, because this is the only square that you can make if you have a perimeter of 16 m.
b) The area of Paul’s garden is 16 m2.
Using a table can help students to assure that they find all of the rectangles for a given perimeter. Today, we started looking at rectangles with the same area but different perimeters. This is a much easier skill to learn, as students can use multiplication to find the rectangles.
Eg.
Draw all the possible rectangles with an area of 8 cm2.
Step 1: Create a graph/table.
| Rectangle # | Length (cm) | Width (cm) | Perimeter (cm) | Area (cm2) |
| 1 | 1 | 8 | 18 | 8 |
| 2 | 2 | 4 | 12 | 8 |
| 3 | 4 | 2 | 12 | 8 |
| 4 | 8 | 1 | 18 | 8 |
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The Gr. 4 students continued to work on telling time. Today we discussed minutes again. We reminded students that there are 5 minutes between the numbers on the clock, and that these numbers can be used to calculate the exact time.
Eg. The clock below reads 3:53.
Homework: Read 20 minutes
Multiplication Quiz – tomorrow
Spelling Test – tomorrow
Math: Gr. 4 – pgs. 140-141 #1-5
Gr. 5 – pgs. 133-134 #1-6
Class Science Fair – March 4th
School Science Fair – March 5th
Book Order – tomorrow