Description
What our Partition Shapes lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Partition Shapes teaches students how to equally partition various kinds of shapes. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to partition shapes into equal parts and express the area of each part as a fraction of a whole. This lesson is for students in 3rd grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. The supplies you will need for this lesson include scissors, markers, extra paper, and glue.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. One optional adjustment to the lesson activity is to have your students draw partitions on paper rather than cutting them out. For an additional activity, you could print out shapes such as a pizza or a pie and have your students “cut” them into halves, thirds or, fourths to share with 1, 2, and 3 friends.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
PARTITION SHAPES LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Partition Shapes
The Partition Shapes lesson plan includes two content pages. To partition means to break something into parts. When we break shapes into parts, or partition them, the pieces should be equal. Equal pieces mean we can write fractions to describe the areas of the shapes.
The lesson shows one whole rectangle. If we wanted to partition this rectangle into two pieces, of halves, both pieces must be equal to each other. The lesson shows an example of an equal partition and an unequal partition of the rectangle.
We can write fractions to show how much each piece is as a part of the whole. The number of pieces becomes the numerator and the total number of pieces becomes the denominator. In the case of the rectangle, the fraction would be 1/2.
We can partition shapes in different ways. For example, we can partition a rectangle either vertically or horizontally.
We can partition a circle into three or four sections. If we partition it into three pieces, we call each section one third of the whole. If we partition it into four pieces, we call each section one quarter, or one fourth, of the whole.
The sections shows visual representations of some different ways to partition shapes into different numbers of pieces. There’s more than one way to split a shape into the same number of equal pieces!
PARTITION SHAPES LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Partition Shapes lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
CUTTING OUT SHAPES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity worksheet, students will first cut out each shape printed on the worksheet and label each piece with a fraction. They should complete halves, thirds, and fourths. The last shape could be their choice of a fraction. They can cut the shapes out from colored paper and then glue them on another page or place them in a Ziplock bag to use for practice.
EQUAL PARTS PRACTICE WORKSHEET
For the practice worksheet, students will split shapes into different numbers of equal parts, labeling each part.
PARTITION SHAPES HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
The homework assignment asks students to solve a word problem where they must determine different ways to split up a hexagon birthday cake into equal parts.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
