Partition Rectangles into Rows & Columns

Being able to partition rectangles takes a bit of spacial reasoning and ability to draw straight lines.  It’s a difficult skill for second graders, especially those with poor printing skills.

Being able to partition rectangles takes a bit of spacial reasoning and ability to draw straight lines.  It’s a difficult skill for second graders, especially those with poor printing skills.

This week, we have been working on this second grade common core math standard:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.G.A.2
Partition a rectangle into rows and columns of same-size squares and count to find the total number of them.

We’ve done a few activities this week, including:

Partition Rectangles by Folding paper

On Monday, we folded cut paper into halves, unfolded the paper, drew the lines and numbered the squares.  We also folded paper more times to make more squares!  This was some hard folding for some of my kiddos, but they were able to do it.  I really emphasized following directions and making a hard crease.

After folding and counting the squares, we glued them in our composition books and I had students write in the number of rows and columns and use sentence frames to tell how many rows, columns, and squares there were in each rectangle.

This little guy needed to finish his labeling, but he’s got the concept!

This anchor chart has helped us throughout our unit.

Partition Rectangles Practice Sheets

I put together a unit on partitioning rectangles this week and created a few practice sheets, in addition to our class activities.

Included in the unit are directions on how to do the folding activity, practice sheets, directions for a class project, and task cards.

Partition Rectangles with Markers

Tomorrow, we’ll practice with whiteboard markers on desks.  Students love writing on their desks and this just allows me one more way to make the content new for students.  The photo in the product page above drawn with whiteboard markers is what we’re doing.  I’ll have students draw a rectangle that mirrors what I draw on the board and they have to partition it into a given number of rows and columns.  Using sentence frames will help solidify the learning even more.

Partition Rectangles through a Class Project

We will also start our class project tomorrow.  I’ve done this class project for a few years in varying formats.

This year, we will create the rectangles, and label them with the rows, columns, and squares.  In past years, I’ve done all the numbers, but this year, I may just target the composite numbers and not list all the numbers
between 1-30.

All of these activities are available in the Partition into Rows & Columns mini unit.

I love when I can create hands-on activities for math.  Although I do have students do a few worksheets to practice and solidify their learning, I much prefer working with mathematical concepts though manipulatives, cutting, numbering, and making connections.

Are you a second grade teacher?  How have you taught this skill to your students?