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Count Unit Squares to Measure Area

Students will measure the area of shapes by counting unit squares, including square centimeters, square meters, square inches, square feet, and improvised units. They will work with both fully covered grids and partially covered shapes.

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Count Unit Squares to Measure Area

Grade 3 · Understanding Area · question 1 of 3

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12 rungs. A star at the top.

ABeach square one square centimeter

Find the area of shape A by counting squares.

How it is taught

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Area is how many unit squares fill a shape.

Count every square inside, not just the edge.

9797

Read it: Count in, walk around

A three-by-six frame of squares sits on the page. You could count every square from one. Look: eighteen fill the inside, and eighteen walk the edge.

  1. Count the squares that fill the inside: 18.
  2. Walk the edge: 6, 3, 6, 3.
  3. Name both: 18 inside, 18 around.

Counting every square from one works, but it is slow, and eighteen squares are easy to miss.

The inside count tells how much the frame covers. The walk around tells how long the edge is.

Eighteen inside and eighteen round can match on this frame. They still measure two different things.

Count the squares inside, then walk all the way around: two measurements of one shape.

Counting only the squares on the edge and calling that how many fill the frame.

Inside is the squares that fill. Round is the walk along the sides. Keep the two counts apart.

A rectangle is 3 squares by 3. How many squares cover it? — 9. 3 rows of 3 squares: skip-count the rows — 3, 6, 9.

Area of a 4 by 3 rectangle

How much space does this rectangle cover? We can find out by counting unit squares.

Here's our rectangle. We want to measure its area — the space inside.

Grade 3 · Measuring area by counting unit squares

A unit square is a square that's one unit long on each side. One of these covers one square unit of space.

Let's tile the rectangle with unit squares. They fit perfectly, with no gaps and no overlaps.

Now we count each square. The top row: one, two, three, four.

The middle row: five, six, seven, eight.

And the bottom row: nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

Twelve unit squares cover the rectangle. The area is twelve square units!

What you see

While they climb, your page writes one true line to ask about tonight, and a short note each Sunday.

MayaGrade 3 · Mathematics
Did you know?

A chessboard has 64 squares — share them out between the 8 rows and each row holds exactly 8.

Today’s goal
1 star — one skill mastered, every rung of its ladder climbed
Climbing now
Divide within 100

An example student.

MayaGrade 3 · Mathematics

Maya earned 2 stars this week — Interpret multiplication as equal groups, which took 6 answers over 3 days before its star landed 3 days ago and Multiply by 6, 7, 8 and 9. Next up: Divide within 100.

An example week.

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