Objectives
- Students will recognize that the area of an irregular shape is found as the sum of the areas of smaller, familiar polygons.
- Students will find the area of irregularly shaped polygons.
- Students will decompose irregular shapes into triangles, rectangles, and parallelograms in order to determine the area of real-world objects.
Vocabulary
- polygon
- rectangle
- parallelogram
- triangle
- irregular polygon
- area
- area as a covering
About the Lesson
This lesson involves using rectangles, parallelograms, and triangles to “fill in” the area of an irregularly shaped polygon. As a result students will: visualize the concept that irregular areas can be found by determining the sum of smaller, more familiar polygons.