Area of a Shapes

So today we had a look at finding the area of a shape. The area of a shape is the total space a shape takes up. The units we use are slightly different to the units we use for length. When we measure lengths or perimeters we are just measuring those in meters, or centimeters, or millimeters, or kilometers, or others. When we are finding areas we find them in units such as meters squared, or centimeters squared, or millimeters squared, or others. These can be written like so:

The little "2" stands for "squared". 

There is one other special unit of measurement used when finding areas. This is a hectare (often written as just "ha"). This is often used for giving the area of land. One hectare is 10000 meters squared. 

Now to actually find the area of shapes, we use special formulas depending on what shape we have. I have made a nice table for you to use which shows you how to find the areas of the shapes we need to find in this unit. It looks like this:

The three shapes we really have to know how to find areas for in this unit are rectangles, parallelograms, and triangles. Now it is important to remember that a square is a special type of rectangle, where the length and width are the same. We do use the same formula for this though (length x width) 

The table above gives us all the information we need for finding the area of the shapes we need. One last point that I need to stress is the fact that you will need to make sure your units are the same. For example, if you had a rectangle with a length of 2.7m and a width of 35cm, you would have to make sure these are both either centimeters or meters. You can do either, but if the question asks you for your answer in square meters, it would make sense to convert the 35cm into meters, so your answer is in square meters. 

I have uploaded a new worksheet (as well as answers for this worksheet) in the "Worksheets" tab. You should be able to work through all of these questions in the next few days. Remember I have cut some questions out, so do all of the questions on the sheet. 

As always, if you have any questions feel free to comment on this post, or email or chat to me in person.