Decompose shapes to find area

The first instance of  is under the 3rd Grade Math Mission. This exercise explores helps to understand how to find area by breaking down complicated shapes into smaller and more manageable shapes.

Types of Problems
There is one type of problem in this exercise:


 * 1) Find the area of the entire figure: This problem has a shape composed of many rectangles and the student is supposed to find and answer the total area. Most of the problems involve adding smaller rectangles, but some can be done by taking the large rectangle and subtracting.Lotarea.png

Strategies
This exercise is easy to get accuracy badges because of the actual multiplications are only single digit multiplies. The adding can involve carrying. The speed badges are medium difficulty but are very reasonable once one is able to get into a good habit of recognizing the rectangles that are being added or subtracted.


 * 1) If you are going for speed, it might be wise to keep a calculator handy for some of the addition that needs carrying.
 * 2) The labels on the side can be used to make things easy. Research indicates that there is no problem that forces the need to subtract numbers before multiplying.