#I'm not enough of a math teacher to do a lesson on the coastline paradox

[inspired-lesson-plans]

Math, 6.G.A.1

Find the area of right triangles, other triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons by composing into rectangles or decomposing into triangles and other shapes; apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.

Do Now:

Students pick one random country using the Random Country Picker from pickerwheel.com, then go to Wikipedia and search "geography of [country]", and record their assigned country's area in square kilometers.

Class Discussion:

Ensure all students successfully found their country's area. Discuss ideas of how cartographers may have figured out their country's area.

Modeled Learning:

Pick a country at random on the SmartBoard, then pull up en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_[country] .

Show how to trace over the country using paper, ruler, and pencil.

When doing so, make it clear that the goal of today's activity is to draw an overly simplified polygon, like the France hexagon example in the first response to this post.

Show how to use the scale provided on the map (which should be on every country found this way) in order to measure the side lengths of the superimposed polygon

Use the side lengths to calculate the area of the polygon.

Calculate the difference between the area of the polygon and the official area of the country.

Draw a more refined polygon, like @vang0bus did, and show how to break this down into simpler polygons (such as triangles and trapezoids), in order to recalculate the area. How much closer is this method to the official area of the country?

Higher Order Learning:

Students perform the activity that you modeled. If they finish with time remaining, encourage them to keep on refining the polygon to get as close to the official area as possible.

why is france called the hexagon when its abundantly clear that it’s a pentagon