Lesson Plan
Multiplication and Area in the Community Garden
Help your students get creative as they apply multiplication skills to find the area of a community garden of their own design! In this lesson, students will practice finding the area of a rectangle within a real-world context.
Grade:
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Learning Objectives
Students will be able to multiply side lengths to find areas of rectangles within the real-world context of designing a community garden.
Introduction
(8 minutes)- Show students images of community gardens or, prior to the lesson, read a book about a community garden, like City Green by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan.
- Explain that a community garden is an area where people can come together to plant fruits, vegetables, and flowers with their neighbors. Community gardens come in all shapes and sizes.
- Tell students that today they are going to use what they know about multiplication and area to design their own community gardens.
- Review what students have previously learned about finding the area of squares and rectangles. Write their responses on chart paper and display through the duration of the lesson.
Beginning
- Allow students to use reference materials in their home language (L1) to look up any unfamiliar words in regards to community gardens.
- Have students discuss the concept of area with a supportive partner or EL with the same home language.
Intermediate
- Provide student-friendly definitions and visuals of the key terms: area, length, width.
- Encourage students to use sentence starters as they discuss the concept of area, such as "To find the area ________."