TILING A FLOOR: AREA OF RECTANGLES

Introduction

Area is all around us. Whether we are constructing a house, partitioning land space to plant crops, or even thinking about painting a wall, we encounter area. It is your duty to explore area, in particular, the area of rectangles, and specifically how it is used in tiling a bathroom floor.

Task

As a tiler, tiling a bathroom floor, you need to know how to calculate area. In order to become an expert in calculating area, you will explore various online resources for area concepts, the formula for calculating area and how to calculate it. After exploration and comprehension of the sites and the content on them, you will begin to work on obtaining the area of the floor of the room, and how many tiles of a specified area are needed to tile the entire floor. These tasks will require a computer, internet connection and stationery (writing) tools. You will work in pairs to complete this task.

Process

1. Go to the following site and read carefully to garner a better understanding of the concept of Area.

http://math.about.com/od/glossaryofterms/g/The-Definition-Of-Area.htm

http://thinkmath.edc.org/resource/measurement-understanding-what-area

http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-area-in-math-definition-formula-quiz.html

http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/tile_the_floor/ (interactive activity)

2. Write an accurate definition of Area based on what you have read.

3. Read the information on the following sites about rectangles.

https://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/rectangle.html

Go to the Play with a rectangle section and manipulate the rectangle and observe the changes that occur.

4. Read the information about calculating the Area of rectangles on the following page and write down the formula for calculating the Area of rectangles, and the examples.

http://www.mathsteacher.com.au/year7/ch13_area/03_rect/rect.htm

http://www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/vol1/area_rectangle.html (Solve the questions at the bottom of the page.)

Also, engage in the activity on this page: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/cc-third-grade-math/cc-third-grade-measurement/cc-third-grade-area/e/understanding-area

5. When you believe that you have a good grasp of the concept of Area, and more specifically the Area of rectangles, go to the following site and read carefully an example of the calculations involved when tiling a floor.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/measuring-to-buy-ceramic-floor-tiles.html

6. Outline the steps involved in deciding how many tiles are needed to tile an entire floor.

7. Now that you have all the information you need about calculating the number of tiles needed to tile a floor, write a letter to Mr. John to thank him for choosing you to be the individual to tile his bathroom. In the letter, outline the calculations for the room, and how many tiles, of what dimensions are needed to get the job done.

Evaluation

	Poor 1	Good 2	Excellent 3	Score
Cooperation with partner	Did not work well together, or share roles.	Work reasonably well together and both members had sharing roles.	Worked very well together and both members executed their part exceptionally.
Definition of Area	Definition is basic, with little or inadequate information.	Definition has the underlining meaning and information.	Definition is detailed and has all the required information.
Outline of steps in deciding # of tiles needed to tile a specified floor	Few steps outlined, without adequate information about how to decide how many tiles are required.	Steps are adequate and have the basic outline of how to decide the number of tiles required.	Steps are detailed and well outlined. They provide a very comprehensive outline of how to decide the number of tiles required.
Letter	Letter has no calculations, many spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors.	Letter provides some calculations, well written, with few grammatical errors.	Letter is excellently written with all the calculations and no errors.
				Total Score =

Conclusion

GUESS WHAT???!

YOU ARE AN EXPERT IN THE FIELD OF TILING FLOORS, BY CALCULATING THE AREA OF RECTANGULAR TILES AND DECIDING HOW MANY ARE NEEDED TO TILE THE BATHROOM FLOOR SUCCESSFULLY. HOPEFULLY WHEN MR. JOHN READS YOUR LETTER OUTLINING THE CALCULATIONS OF THE NUMBERS OF TILES, OF WHAT DIMENSION ARE NEEDED TO TILE HIS BATHROOM, HE WILL HIRE YOU.

Credits

Picture Site:

http://previews.123rf.com/images/iqoncept/iqoncept1107/iqoncept11070008…

Author Biography

Kedesha Bailey

I am currently a student at Church Teachers' College : Mandeville. I am majoring in Teaching Secondary Education Mathematics and will be graduating in May of 2016.

Permissions

We all may benefit from sharing our work, thus permission is given for others to use and modify this Webquest for educational, non-commercial purposes.

Teacher Page

Students will learn computation of area given tiles of defined dimensions to cover the floor a room of a specified dimension.

This webquest was intended for grades seven (7) and eight (8) students. Students will first need to learn how to calculate the area of rectangles and how it may be used in the real world. Students will create an outline of how to calculate the area of the floor of the room, and how many tiles of a specified area are needed to tile the entire floor.

Hopefully, by the end of this webquest, students will have mastered Area of rectangles.