Build Your Own Zoo

This webquest applies area and perimeter to the real life situation of designing enclosures for animals at the zoo. It should conclude with a trip to the zoo. Below you will find a worksheet to use in conjunction with the field trip, to apply the mathematical principles students have been working on. Feel free to edit both this worksheet and/or provide your own list of animals and area they should be allotted based on the animals students are likely to encounter in your local zoo.

Standards

This webquest was designed for use in a third grade classroom, though some standards apply to fourth grade as well. The Common Core Standards this webquest addresses are:

�CCSS.Math.Content.3.MD.C.7 Relate area to the operations of multiplication and addition.
◦CCSS.Math.Content.3.MD.C.7a Find the area of a rectangle with whole-number side lengths by tiling it, and show that the area is the same as would be found by multiplying the side lengths.
◦CCSS.Math.Content.3.MD.C.7b Multiply side lengths to find areas of rectangles with whole-number side lengths in the context of solving real world and mathematical problems, and represent whole-number products as rectangular areas in mathematical reasoning.
4th Grade
CCSS.Math.Content.4.MD.A.3 Apply the area and perimeter formulas for rectangles in real world and mathematical problems. For example, find the width of a rectangular room given the area of the flooring and the length, by viewing the area formula as a multiplication equation with an unknown factor.

Credits

This webquest was created with Allie Parker and Amy Steves.

Other

This webquest should take approximately three 50 minute periods. It can be adapted for shorter lengths of time by eliminating the worksheet associated with the Math Playground activity, as well as eliminating the worksheet on animal habitats. For a three day webquest, the first day will be spent watching the video about area and perimeter, and then working on the Math Playground activity. If students are unable to complete the activity on the first day, they can use their recorded answers on their worksheet to move through to the question they need to answer next.

They will then move on to researching the animals they are assigned and recording this information on the worksheet provided. As a group they will need to determine the dimensions of the enclosure for each animal, make sure their calculations are correct, and then draw out their enclosure. Please provide enough time for students to carefully label all the measurements, as well as include information and drawings about what they learned about the animal's habitat.