Differentiated Instruction Assessment Product Idea

Area of Rectangles with Minecraft

By: Nicole McBee

Rationale:
I decided to revamp an existing lesson that focused on 3rd grade
standards of finding the area of a rectangle. This lesson focused on
images of rectangles and word problems in which the student was
asked to find the area of the rectangles presented. I know students
are really into Minecraft and gaming so I wanted to make a lesson in
which the students would be interested in. The lesson adapted very
well because instead of the student having to do boring book work
they got to create a rectangle and find the area using a game. By
getting the opportunity to place the blocks hopefully the students
could begin to link the concept of area to the actual creation. Often
times we will have the students create rectangles with physical objects
and it is hard for the student to move from concrete to pictorial and
then abstract. By having the student use this 3D world and game all
areas of concrete, pictorial, and abstract are done in one sitting. Most

of the challenge in creating this lesson came in the idea of what to call
each piece, but thankfully my 9yr old helped me.
Reflection:
The most time consuming part of this activity was coming up with the
word problems. However, after I did this activity hardly took my 9yr
old son any time to make. He also had a blast placing TNT around the
rectangles in the end and blowing it all up. Overall, I think the
students would like this project and I may want to extend it to more
than 5 rectangles.

Create a Minecraft Structure

Instructions:
Log-in to your Minecraft account, go into Creative Mode, Create
a world called Area of Rectangles
Create the rectangles below according to the instructions.
Answer the questions using a sign by the structure. Be
prepared to show me your world with these rectangles
1. Create a rectangle with the dimensions of 4 stones wide
and 7 stones long. How many stones did you need to
make the rectangle? What is the area of the rectangle you
created?
2. Create a rectangular carpeted floor (any color carpet).
The area of each carpet piece is 1 square foot. The
carpet has 5 rows with 4 tiles in each row. What is the
area of the carpeted rectangle you created?
3. Create a wooden rectangle. The area of each wood piece
is 1 square yard. The rectangle has 3 rows with 8 tiles in
each row. What is the area of the wooden rectangle?
4. Create a diamond rectangle. The area of each diamond
block is 1 square foot. The diamond rectangle has 6 rows
of 7. What is the area of the diamond rectangle?
5. Create a rectangle out of stone. Each stone block is 1
square foot. The area of the stone rectangle is 30 square
feet. What could be the dimensions (length and width) of
the rectangle?

Grading Rubric
Rectangle 1 (20pts):
o Correct dimensions of rectangle (10pts)
o Correct material used (5pts)
o Correctly answered the questions (5pts)

____

Rectangle 2 (20pts):
o Correct dimensions of rectangle (10pts)
o Correct material used (5pts)
o Correctly answered the questions (5pts)

____

Rectangle 3 (20pts):
o Correct dimensions of rectangle (10pts)
o Correct material used (5pts)
o Correctly answered the questions (5pts)

____

Rectangle 4 (20pts):
o Correct dimensions of rectangle (10pts)
o Correct material used (5pts)
o Correctly answered the questions (5pts)

____

Rectangle 5 (20pts):
o Correct dimensions of rectangle (10pts)
o Correct material used (5pts)
o Correctly answered the questions (5pts)

____

Total Points

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