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Area and Perimeter

Today I was planning for a 3rd grade math lesson on area and perimeter with a Title I math coach. We came up with a fun little app smashing lesson using the FREE iPad apps Geoboard and Educreations. You can also do this same lesson on a computer.

Before I begin, I just have to say that geoboards were never my favorite math manipulative. I would find rubber bands everywhere, children would cut themselves somehow/someway on the little pegs, and it was hard for those who struggled with their fine motor skills. Digital geoboards puts all of my anxieties to rest!!

So...next week we are hitting up four 3rd grade classes in one day to carry out our lesson. We will first introduce the idea of a geoboard...many of the students will be seeing this for the first time. We are going to give them a few minutes to play experiment with the app, Geoboard. Hopefully this will knock out any off task behavior once we get rolling. Next, we are going to ask students to form shapes based on an area and perimeter we project on the board. After a few rounds the children will choose one of the following scenario cards that can be found in my TpT store:


This is when the real world experience comes to play! The students have to make their scenario card come to life by designing the square/rectangle that is described on their task card. The task cards above go best with the 5x5 Geoboard. They will then take a screenshot and upload their design to Educreations. From here they will explain their word problem while annotating. Here is my sample recording. We used different colored bands to help the students recognize where to put the tick marks when calculating the perimeter. I am sure theirs will turn out ten times better.


If you do not have a class set of iPads, don't fret! There is an awesome website by Math Playground that students can visit for a digital geoboard. Click {HERE}. I like this site a lot because students can construct shapes, find the area and perimeter of their shapes and then check their work by clicking the "Calculate" button. Check it out:



For those upper elementary/higher level math students, have them estimate the perimeter for triangles. They will quickly discover that the answers include decimals!


Afterwards, students can visit the web version of Educreations and create their mini movie.