Lesson #3 Area of Parallelograms

This is an adaptation of OUR lesson 6-1.6 Area of Parallelograms. Student Facing Goal I can use the area formula to find the area of any parallelogram. Lesson Narrative This lesson allows students to practice using the formula for the area of parallelograms, and to choose the measurements to use as a base and a corresponding height. Through repeated reasoning, they see that some measurements are more helpful than others. For example, if a parallelogram on a grid has a vertical side or horizontal side, both the base and height can be more easily determined if the vertical or horizontal side is used as a base. Along the way, students see that parallelograms with the same base and the same height have the same area because the products of those two numbers are equal, even if the parallelograms look very different. This gives us a way to use given dimensions to find others.

By Todd Steinhauer