The purpose of this activity is for students to fit rectangles of a specified shape into a defined space according to identified criteria.
This activity assumes the students have experience in the following areas:
The problem is sufficiently open ended to allow the students freedom of choice in their approach. It may be scaffolded with guidance that leads to a solution, and/or the students might be given the opportunity to solve the problem independently.
The example responses at the end of the resource give an indication of the kind of response to expect from students who approach the problem in particular ways.
A small business wants to build a customer carpark on the land in front of their shop.
The land is a 15 m by 12 m rectangle with road access on the short side. Each car park space needs to be 3 m by 5 m and cars need at least 4 m of clear space between rows to get in and out without incident.
Can you arrange a layout for the carpark that will allow for at least 8 cars to be parked on the space?
The following prompts illustrate how this activity can be structured around the phases of the Mathematics Investigation Cycle.
Introduce the problem. Allow students time to read it and discuss in pairs or small groups.
Discuss ideas about how to solve the problem. Emphasise that, in the planning phase, you want students to say how they would solve the problem, not to actually solve it.
Allow students time to work through their strategy and find a solution to the problem.
Allow students time to check their answers and then either have them pair share with other groups or ask for volunteers to share their solution with the class.
The student creates a scale model of the parking space using grid paper. They cut out rectangles to represent the parking space of one car and physically position the ‘parks’ on a 15 x 12 grid. The student creates several viable layouts.
Click on the image to enlarge it. Click again to close.
The student creates a scale model of the parking space using measurements of 1 centimetre to represent 1 metre. They draw a diagram of a viable solution allowing for the practical consideration of car access from the road.
Printed from https://nzmaths.co.nz/resource/parking-cars at 6:32pm on the 18th April 2024