At the beginning of the lesson, children were given this question and a 100 square.
“The area of a rectangle can not be a prime number.” Do you agree or disagree? Explain.
Children cut up their hundred grid into 100 squares and explored making rectangles with prime numbers. After much discussion, they found that the statement was false; the area of a rectangle can be prime as long as one side is 1 and the other is the prime number.
Then, we explored the area of a square with the following question:
“The area of a square can be prime.” Do you agree or disagree? Explain.
The children experimented created squares with their paper squares and found that a square cannot be made with a prime number because each side needs to be equal. Once they had found the first three numbers which make a square (1,4, 9) they were able to predict the subsequent ones and identified them as “squared numbers”.
How many different squares numbers can you create using paper?
