Area of Scaled Parallelograms and Triangles

This Instructional Activity is a part of the Lesson 6, Unit 1, Grade 7. In this activity, students transfer what they learned with the pattern blocks to calculate the area of other scaled shapes. In groups of 2, students draw scaled copies of either a parallelogram or a triangle and calculate the areas. Then, each group compares their results with those of a group that worked on the other shape. They find that the scaled areas of two shapes are the same and attribute this to the fact that the two shapes had the same original area and were scaled using the same scale factors.