- Coordinates, Area,
Volume, and Capacity
In the beginning of this unit, your child will practice naming and locating ordered number pairs on a coordinate grid. Whole numbers, fractions, and negative numbers will be used as coordinates. Your child will play the game Hidden Treasure, which provides additional practice with coordinates. You might want to challenge your child to a round.
In previous grades, your child studied the perimeters (distances around) and the areas (amounts of surface) of geometric figures. Fourth Grade Everyday Mathematics developed and applied formulas for the areas of rectangles, parallelograms, and triangles. In this unit, your child will review these formulas and explore new area topics, including the rectangle method for finding areas of regular and irregular shapes.
Students will also examine how mathematical transformations change the area, perimeter, and angle measurements of a figure. These transformations resemble changes and motions in the physical world. In some transformations, figures are enlarged in one or two dimensions; in other transformations, figures are translated (slid) or reflected (flipped over).
In the Earth’s Water Surface exploration, students locate places on Earth with latitude and longitude. Then they use latitude and longitude in a sampling experiment that enables them to estimate, without measuring, the percent of Earth’s surface that is covered by water. In the School’s Land Area exploration, students use actual measurements and scale drawings to estimate their school’s land area.
The unit concludes with a look at volume (the amount of space an object takes up) and capacity (the amount of material a container can hold). Students develop a formula for the volume of a prism (volume = area of the base ∗ the height). They observe the metric equivalents 1 liter = 1,000 milliliters = 1,000 cubic centimeters, and they practice making conversions between U.S. customary measures (1 gallon = 4 quarts, and so on).
