Real life connections in Math

Today's Math class on Area was INTERESTING and a nice way to connect the lesson to a real life scenario. After taking up the homework, the students watched an episode of TVO'S Prime Radicals (Bunnies OK Corral). The episode looked at how to calculate perimeter and area in order to construct a corral for bunnies that escaped. Here's a summary of the episode:

Uncle Norm's neighbor Mrs. Pearplum's prized bunnies have escaped! The Rads need to find a way to help her build a better bunny corral... but what shape should it be so they have the most space using just the amount of fencing she already has? The Rads visit a local hobby farm to learn how perimeter and area work together to create the best bunny corral. Perimeter and area are important real-world concepts in their own right, and their relationship certainly is no less important. This relationship can be intuitively challenging. For example, it is not uncommon for students and even adults to believe-at least at first thought-that a fixed perimeter, such as a given amount of concrete curbing, yields the same area no matter how you shape it into a closed figure. In this episode, the focus is on the relationship between perimeter (a one-dimensional measure of length) and area (a two-dimensional measure of space). The purpose of the episode is to illustrate that 2D shapes having the same area can have different perimeters by using the real world context of construction.

Students enjoyed the part about how to make Pentomino puzzles.