Amelia Earhart 3rd Graders “Compute” Area

April 9th, 2019 /
Shauna Sprunger /
Amelia Earhart, Elementary School, News, Provo STEM, Schools

Amelia Earhart Elementary is using new ways to teach math in Miss Ririe’s 3rd grade class. With the help of Google ChromeBooks, students are able to solve geometry problems and display their work electronically on the whiteboard.

Focusing on the core standard that 3rd graders will be able to “Measure areas by counting unit squares (square cm, square m, square in, square ft, and improvised units)”, Miss Ririe had students use their Chromebooks to calculate area. Students began the lesson by opening up their laptops to find a shape that was split up into multiple squares. The students then grouped together the squares into sets so they could count and add them up to find the area of the entire shape.

For example, let’s say there is a four by four square shown, split-up into 16 smaller squares. The 3rd graders might chose to cut the square four times horizontally, making it four rectangles each with four smaller squares. They would count each section and then add them up. In this case it would be 4+4+4+4. They would do this all using the touchscreens on their ChromeBooks, making sure they showed their work along the way.

After they were done with their work, they closed their computers and Miss Ririe projected one of their ChromeBooks to the board. The student were then given a microphone and explained to the class how they came to their answer while using their work, projected on the whiteboard, as a reference. Miss Ririe then asked other students for a different ways to find a solution, which helped her demonstrate how to better problem solve. She tied off this portion with a real life example of buying a rug and how her understanding of area helped her understand that the rug was too small for her apartment.

Miss Ririe used an innovative way to teach her class that made individual feedback and group discussion easy. It also helped to ensure that her students understood the real-world applications of the content learned.