Investigate strategies for finding areas of squares and rectangles.

What is area?
At St Patricks we explain what the term ‘area’ means and children are taught to calculate the area of a shape.
Area is the term used to define the amount of space taken up by a 2D shape or surface. We measure area in square units: cm2 or m2.
Area is calculated by multiplying the length of a shape by its width. In this case, we could work out the area of this rectangle even if it weren’t on squared paper, just by working out 5cm x 5cm = 25cm2 (the shape is not drawn to scale).

Learning about area.
Children are introduced to area in Primary 5, when they will be asked to find the area of various shapes, simply by counting the 1cm2 squares they occupy on paper.
In Primary 6 children will be expected to use the formula (length x width) to work out the area of a rectangle. They will often be given rectangles which are not drawn to scale, so will need to remember this formula. They also need to estimate the area of irregular shapes.