Description

What our Square Roots lesson plan includes

Lesson Objectives and Overview: Square Roots introduces students to square roots. After explaining what a square root is, the lesson defines vocabulary related to square roots such as inverse, radical and radicand. Next, the lesson walks through the process for finding the square root. Negative square roots are briefly covered and a chart of perfect square roots is also provided for reference. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to take the square root of a number. This lesson is for students in 5th grade and 6th 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 graph paper and markers.

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 addition to this lesson is to have your students work with larger numbers. You can also have your students memorize their perfect squares up to 15. If you have more advanced students, you can begin to have them think about numbers that do not have whole numbers for their answers by beginning to think about which two whole numbers they fall between. For another activity, you could have your students create a video or chant about square roots.

Teacher Notes

The teacher notes page includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.

SQUARE ROOTS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES

Square Roots

The Square Roots lesson plan includes two content pages. Squaring is when you raise a number to the second power (for example, 2² = 4 because 2 x 2 = 4). Taking the square root of a number is the inverse of squaring it. To take the square root, you need to find the factor that’s multiplied twice to make the number.

For example, let’s find the square root of 16. To do this, ask yourself “What number multiplied by itself equals 16?” Since 4 x 4 = 16, the square root of 16 is 4.

The symbol used when taking the square root is a radical. Radical signs look like check marks with a number or variable under it. The number or variable under the radical sign is the radicand.

Let’s take a look at an example that shows how to use the radical symbol: 2² = 2 x 2 = 4, so √4 = 2. Similarly, 5² = 5 x 5 = 25, so √25 = 5 and √100 = 10 because 10 x 10 = 100.

When taking the square root of a number, if your answer is a whole number then that means you have a perfect square.

Perfect Squares Chart

The lesson includes a chart that lists perfect squares from √1 to √144.

Negative Signs with Square Roots

If the radical has a negative sign on the outside, the negative stays with the answer. For example, –√81 = -9 and -√36 = -6.

Sometimes, taking the square root of a number does not give you a whole number. Before learning how to deal with those, it’s important to solidify your understanding of perfect squares. Once you learn the perfect squares, solving math problems becomes much faster and easier!

SQUARE ROOTS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS

The Square Roots lesson plan includes four worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, a homework assignment, and a quiz. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.

DRAWING SQUARES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET

The activity worksheet asks students to draw squares on graph paper to visually understand the concept of a square root. They will then find the area of the square and the length of each side.

FIND THE PERFECT SQUARES PRACTICE WORKSHEET

For the practice worksheet, students will circle all of the perfect squares in the list of numbers printed on the worksheet.

SQUARE ROOTS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT

The homework assignment asks students to memorize the square roots of each number up to 15. It includes a chart that lists the square roots of each number for reference.

QUIZ

This lesson also includes a quiz that you can use to test students’ understanding of the lesson material. For the quiz, students will find the square root of 16. They will explain their work and draw a diagram to support their answer.

Worksheet Answer Keys

This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the quiz. 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.