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What is it?
Two for one this week. Two resources from the same author, that I absolutely love. 20 lovely Area Mazes! I got a bit addicted to Area Mazes myself at the start of 2016 having seen a feature about them in the news. The latest maths craze from Japan, apparently. I remember one Sunday afternoon where I sat down to do one on an app, and 3 hours later I was on Level 72 and seeing rectangles and squares everywhere I looked!

Area Mazes are suburb. On the face of it they are so simple. Students have to use logic and geometrical knowledge to work out the missing dimensions on a variety of rectangles. We rather skeptically tried a few of them with our Year 8s last year during the area unit last year, and they absolutely loved them! Seriously, they could not get enough of them. There is something about the apparent simplicity that captivates students.

How can it be used?
The beauty of an Area Maze is it does not take much explaining. I ran through one example on the board with my students, brain-storming different ideas for approaching them, and then letting them get stuck in, telling them that they needed to convince me of their answers with some working out to show they had not just guessed. Pretty soon we were frantically searching the internet for more challenging ones, and students were keen to take them home to show their parents. If your students do take to them, then there is also the option to challenge them to create their own, with any many rectangles as they like.

Thanks so much for sharing

Craig Barton

 

Download 8 Area Maze Problems
Download 12 Area Maze Problems
View the author’s other resources