Students love this memorable area of a triangle foldable activity for student interactive notebooks.
Your students are sure to remember this area of a triangle lesson with its silly, funny, and memorable love story!
Teaching the area of a triangle isn’t the most exciting lesson in the world, but that can change with a bit of creativity and a quick, easy foldable activity.
Don’t be surprised when your students roll their eyes at this silly little love story – but that’s the point. This love story is so corny that it will stick in their memories.
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Here’s the quick story – This foldable represents a “love triangle” because the first half of the triangle is looking for the other half which says, “You complete me!” When the two halves combine, they make a complete rectangle. It’s very simple to make and makes a great reference aid for students. It’s the silly things that help keep ideas sharp and fresh.
The hardest part about finding the area of triangles is forgetting to divide the area by 2. This foldable provides a concrete visual showing that the area of a triangle is HALF the area of a rectangle.
Formula options
In my district, depending on the grade level and depending on the students, we switch from using the formula A=length x width to Area = base x height. There’s also 1/2 base x height.
This foldable offers all of these options – simply choose the option that best suits the needs of your class.
Size options
There are also two different sizes offered in this foldable activity. The full-sized option is for an 8½ x 10-inch paper. I hole-punch the side of the first page, and students put it in their binders. The second page contains pieces to be cut and glued. Brightly colored paper or plain, white paper decorated with markers, colored pencils and crayons make it look fantastic!
The second option size is smaller and made for smaller sized composition notebooks that many teachers use for interactive student notebooks.
Looking for more middle school math lessons and ideas?
Check out this article about Converting Fractions, Percents, and Decimals Foldable Reference which includes another foldable activity.
