In Covering and Surrounding, your student will explore areas and perimeters of figures. Attention is given especially to quadrilaterals and triangles. Your child will also explore surface area and volume of rectangular prisms. The Investigations in this Unit will help them
- Analyze what it means to measure area and perimeter
- Relate perimeter to surrounding a figure and area to covering a figure
- Develop strategies, procedures, and formulas, stated in words or symbols, for finding areas and perimeters of rectangles, parallelograms, and triangles
- Investigate relationships between perimeter and area, including that one can vary while the other stays fixed
- Analyze how the area of a triangle and the area of a parallelogram are related to the area of a rectangle
- Use nets that are made from rectangles and triangles to find surface areas of prisms
- Find the volume of rectangular prisms with fractional side lengths
- Use perimeter, area, surface area, and volume to solve problems.
When your child encounters a new problem, it is a good idea to ask questions such as:
- What attributes of a shape are important to measure?
- Is an exact answer required?
- How do I recognize whether area or perimeter of a figure is involved?
- What am I looking for when I find area? When I find perimeter?
- What relationships involving area, perimeter, or both, will help solve the problem?
- How can I determine the surface area of a prism from a net or a three-dimensional representation of the prism?
- What is the difference between area of a two-dimensional figure and surface area of a prism?