Area and perimeter: pool measurements of school rectangles in a shared Google Sheet and re-sort them.

Year 5 take metre sticks and tape measures to ten rectangles around the classroom and corridor, such as a table top, the door, the whiteboard, a display board, a floor tile and a PE bench top. Each pair measures four of them to the nearest centimetre, works out the perimeter and area in their books, and types the numbers into the pair's rows of a shared Google Sheet on school accounts. On the board the teacher filters the sheet to one object at a time: where three pairs give the door as 198 cm by 76 cm and one gives 189 cm, that pair goes back to measure again. Then the teacher sorts the whole table by area and again by perimeter, and the order changes. Pairs search the pooled rows for surprises and find that the whiteboard, 180 cm by 120 cm, and the display board, 240 cm by 90 cm, share an area of 21,600 cm² with perimeters of 600 cm and 660 cm, while the bench top, 300 cm by 25 cm, has a longer perimeter than the whiteboard and about a third of its area.

Tools: Google Sheets Nine ideas for your own version in Generate