Description
What our LEGO®: Perimeter and Area STEM lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: LEGO®: Perimeter and Area STEM has students using LEGO® bricks to explore and calculate perimeter and area! Students will differentiate between perimeter and area. They will construct simple shapes with LEGO® bricks, modeling the perimeter and area of the shapes. This lesson is for students in 3rd grade and 4th 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 yellow 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.
Options for Lesson
You can check out the “Options for Lesson” section of the classroom procedure page for additional suggestions for ideas and activities to incorporate into the lesson. An option for this lesson is to introduce the concept of using a grid and square units by having students draw a grid on construction paper or use 1-inch square graph paper. The grid lines are 1 inch by 1 inch. Then, cut out the squares. This option provides measurement practice and familiarizes students with math terminology that they will use in the lesson.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page provides an extra paragraph of information to help guide the lesson and remind you what to focus on. The blank lines on this page are available for you to write out thoughts and ideas you have as you prepare the lesson. There is also a help page to assist you in explaining to students how to count the studs for calculating perimeter.
LEGO®: PERIMETER AND AREA STEM LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Introduction
The LEGO®: Perimeter and Area STEM lesson includes three content pages. The first page provides a story about JD and his dog, Goldilocks. After they read the story, the lesson teaches the concepts of perimeter and area through the scenario, and students will have to interact with the content as they go along. It asks students to guess what happens after JD and his family find Goldilocks. JD and his dad build a fence, of course!
Before building the fence, they have to figure out how much fence material to use and how large of a space they need to fence. The lesson asks students if they know how to figure out how much fencing JD needs and how big the space has to be. They will write on the lines how they would figure out how much fence and space JD and his dad need for Goldilocks.
The lesson continues in this format, interacting with students directly: Here is what JD and his dad did first. They drew a picture of their backyard. As you can see, it is the shape of a rectangle. They decided that they wanted to use all the space in the backyard for Goldilocks to run around in. In this case, what would you do next? If you said to measure the space, you are correct! But where should they measure—inside or outside the lines? Let’s talk about the difference.
JD and his dad wanted the maximum amount of space for Goldilocks to run and play. They also wanted to make sure they bought enough fencing to go around the whole backyard. These are different measurements. They measured the outside lines to see how much fence they needed to go around the space inside. This outside measurement is the perimeter. The space, or size of a surface, inside the lines is the area. We measure the area to know how much space there is inside the perimeter. We will talk about area later!
Perimeter
The word perimeter comes from the suffix peri-, meaning outside. And any time you see the word meter, you know it means measure. The dotted lines on the rectangle show the outside measurement or perimeter. We measure the perimeter to know how much of something it will take to go around the space. JD and his dad wanted to know how much fence they needed to completely fence in the yard. Look at the drawing by JD’s dad. What do you think they measured to make sure they had enough fencing?
If you said each side of the yard, you are correct! One way to think about perimeter is that perimeter is the sum of all the sides. You can use this expression:
P = Side + Side + Side + Side (etc.)
or
P = S1 + S2 + S3 + S4 (etc.)
(You will learn other expressions for different shapes. But this is all you need to know for right now.) JD measured each of the sides of the yard. Can you find the perimeter of the yard and how much fence is needed to keep Goldilocks safe? [At this point, students will again use the blank lines to write their answer.]
You learned that the expression for finding the perimeter is to add the sides of the shape. Use it to find the sum of JD’s yard:
P = S1 + S2 + S3 + S4
P = 20 ft + 40 ft + 20 ft + 40 ft
P = 120 ft
JD will need 120 linear feet of fence to keep Goldilocks safe in the yard! As you probably guessed, linear means a straight line.
Area
Recall that JD’s dad wanted to make sure that Goldilocks had plenty of room to run and play. She is not playing on top of the fence. That’s silly! Goldilocks is playing inside the fence. So, he wants to know how much room Goldilocks has inside the fence line. How does he calculate the inside space? Luckily for us, the area is measured in square units. An easy way to think of square units is to think about how many squares of equal size fit in a space.
It would be challenging to draw the shape of the yard’s actual size and fill it with squares. Think of a map. Do we draw countries of their actual size on a map? No, we scale the map so the countries fit. For example, 1 inch equals 1,000 miles.
Each square in the grid is scaled. In JD’s yard, one square equals 1 square foot (ft2). In other words, each side of the square is a foot (12 inches) in length. Think of floor tiles. If you want to know how many tiles are in a room, what’s the easiest way to find out? If you said to count the squares, you are right! For small grids, that’s easy. However, a better way is to use the expression for area. This is the expression for finding the area of a rectangle:
A = Length × Width
or
A = L × W
Now put in the numbers for the length and width of the yard:
A = 40 ft × 20 ft
A = 800 square feet (or 800 ft2)
Goldilocks has 800 square feet to play in! Remember that it will take 120 feet of fence to go around JD’s backyard. Notice the difference.
Summary
So, let’s review what we learned. If we want to know the distance around a shape, we sum up the sides. The distance around most shapes (except a circle) is called the perimeter. Perimeter is usually reported in units of inches, feet, or yards. Or if we use the metric system, it would most likely be in millimeters, centimeters, or meters. For example, the perimeter of Goldilocks’s fence is 120 feet.
P = S1 + S2 + S3 + S4
P = 20 ft + 40 ft + 20 ft + 40 ft
P = 120 ft
When we need to know the space inside a shape, that is the area. The area is measured in squares, with a superscripted 2 often after the unit of measurement. We report the area in square units—inches squared (in2), feet squared (ft2), or yards squared (yd2). And if we use the metric system, millimeters squared (mm2), centimeters squared (cm2), or meters squared (m2). For example, Goldilocks has 800 square feet to run, chase, and play in.
A = L × W
A = 40 ft × 20 ft
A = 800 square feet (or 800 ft2)
LEGO®: PERIMETER AND AREA STEM LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The LEGO®: Perimeter and Area STEM lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. Each one will help students solidify their grasp of the material they learned throughout the lesson. You can refer to the classroom procedure guidelines to know when to hand out each worksheet.
DOG PARKS ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
The activity builds on the story in the content pages. Students will find the perimeter and area of three dog parks. They must show their work in the boxes next to
the parks. Then they will answer the question at the bottom of the page.
LEGO®: PERIMETER AND AREA STEM PRACTICE WORKSHEET
Students will use LEGO® bricks to build the shapes of six different prompts. They will then find the perimeter and area for each shape, showing their work in the corresponding boxes.
TO THE ZOO! HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will think of four medium to large zoo animals. They must use the grid on the page to draw enclosures for the animals. Each enclosure should be big enough for the animals they chose. They will then find the area and perimeter of the four enclosures and draw or paste a picture of each animal. As a bonus, students can research standard enclosure sizes to see if they gave their animals enough space!
Worksheet Answer Keys
There are answer keys for the practice and homework worksheets at the end of the lesson plan document. Correct answers are in red to make it easier to compare them to students’ responses. Given the nature of the homework assignment, the answer key simply provides a sample response for reference or as a guide if needed. 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.
