ABSTRACT
Fourth-grade students are proposing a new design for a section of the playground to be constructed at the school. They need to learn to calculate the area of various shapes. The teacher has given the class a 3×3 grid of activities for learning to calculate area. Each successive column provides more difficult experiences; the rows represent visual, auditory, and hands-on activities (Figure 5.1). The students recently completed surveys to identify their learning style strengths, and the teacher encouraged the class to pay attention to their strengths but to also challenge themselves to strengthen other modes. One student decides to follow a hands-on activity in the first column, using manipulatives to explore the concept of area. Another already knows how to calculate the area of rectangles and squares and chooses an auditory offering of a podcast to learn to calculate the area of various triangles.
