Area by Tiling
Find the area of a rectangle by tiling it with unit squares and show that the result equals the product of the side lengths
Lesson
Set out your lesson
Practise the bounded task in Area by Tiling; see exact limits before inferring broader coverage.
Before teaching
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Can count rows and equal groups; squares represent equal area, not dots on corners.
Exact directed source edges retained; earlier authorship is not learner attainment.
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Practise the bounded task in Area by Tiling; see exact limits before inferring broader coverage.
Practise the bounded task in Area by Tiling; see exact limits before inferring broader coverage.
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Learning resources
Extra practice links — they do not replace Gakuva’s teaching approach.
Illustrative Mathematics · Practice link — not the full lesson
India's Bathroom Tiles
Before you open · source notes
Tile arrays motivate area as rows times columns. Use it for area by tiling, not every perimeter formula.
Free, no sign-in. A teacher solution is on the same page, so use the student view with your child.
Before you openAsk how many tiles cover the rectangle and how multiplication matches the count.
Opening this link does not save learning or assess mastery.
Source, access and review notes
Public Illustrative Mathematics task page. The .html address responds HTTP 308 to this URL. An anonymous GET of this URL on 2026-11-11 returned HTTP 200 with no login or payment prompt. Where a teacher solution is present, it is on the same page as the student task; this check did not find a separate locked student view. An adult can use the student view section and should not read a solution aloud. Advertising was not observed in the fetched HTML text; that is not a browser, device, or ad-free guarantee. This is a paper or discussion task, not an automatically marked interactive game. Opening the link does not save practice or assess mastery. Diagrams on the page use missing or filename-only alt text, so they are not an accessible image equivalent. Accessibility still depends on an adult describing the picture.
Illustrative Mathematics. “India's Bathroom Tiles.” Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. External task; Gakuva does not copy, host, embed, or redistribute it.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — link only
Check understanding
- Tile a 4×6 rectangle and count 24 squares, then verify 4×6=24
- Explain why the number of rows times the number in each row gives the area
- Draw a rectangle on squared paper, tile it, and write the multiplication
“If a rectangular room is 4 m long and 3 m wide, can your child work out its area by tiling it with 1-metre squares in their head — and explain why that equals 4 × 3?”
Curriculum record
- Type
- Procedural
- Subject
- Mathematics
- Domain
- Measurement
- Age range
- Ages 8–12
Standards