Timpanogos 6th Graders aren’t Trapped by Trapezoids

April 8th, 2019 /
Shauna Sprunger /
Elementary School, News, Schools, Teaching and Learning, Timpanogos

6th graders at Timpanogos Elementary recently had an unparalleled time learning all about the areas of parallelograms from their teacher Mr. Ridge.

The lesson started off with Mr. Ridge explaining how to find the area of a trapezoid. Mr. Ridge decided to go for an old-school approach and wrote out directions on the whiteboard, detailing how to find a trapezoids area while the class followed along. With this method of teaching students could see how Mr. Ridge managed to organize his work and how that led to solving the problem. The students could then do their own hand written work, better understanding how to properly solve similar problems, as they were able to better understand through observing Mr. Ridge’s modeling of the solution.

After the group lesson was completed, the class went to their desks to work on some individual problems. Theses problems had to do with understanding the areas of triangles and applying that to finding the area of other types of shapes. For example, the students would cut off pieces of a parallelogram in order to form triangles and then would use those triangles to find the height of the whole shape. They then used the height to find the shape’s area. While the students worked, Mr. Ridge walked around the room to answer questions and help individual students that had difficulties understanding the content.

Through teaching this lesson, Mr. Ridge fulfilled the 6th grader common core standard that students will be able to, “Find the area of right triangles, other triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons by composing into rectangles or decomposing into triangles and other shapes; apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.”

The lesson that Mr. Ridge prepared for his sixth-grade class was interactive and helpful. Through participation in this lesson, the students were able to develop the skills they need to fully understand geometry and future related lessons.