Tiling rooms of a house

Tiling rooms of a house

Pencil and paper
Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
This task is about working out areas of rooms.
 

The tile is one unit of area.
 
How many tiles would be needed to cover the area of each of the rooms?
a)
   Bedroom __________
 
b)
   Bathroom __________
 
c)
   Kitchen __________
 
d)
   Porch __________
 
e)
Guess the number of tiles needed to cover the shape. __________
 
Look at the tile to make a rough estimate of the number of tiles needed to cover the shape. __________
 
  
Task administration: 
Equipment:
Ruler; pencil.

There are two versions of question e). The first was used with trialling of Year 4 students, the second was used with Year 8 students.
Levels:
2, 4
Curriculum info: 
Maths, Geometry and Measurement, Measurement
Keywords: 
nemp, area
Description of task: 
For this NEMP task students calculate the number of tiles needed to cover the area of several rooms.
Answers/responses: 
 

Y4 (10/1997)

Y8 (09/1997)
a) 6 tiles 27% 69%
b) 5 tiles 8% 42%
c) 10 tiles 21% 61%
d)

2 tiles
3 tiles

 9%
17%		 45%
12%
e)

20-30 tiles
15-19 tiles

 37%
10%		 45%
18%

NOTE: Year 8 students were substantially better than year 4 students when calculating areas, but not when estimating.