LESSON 6 How Close Is Close Enough

Work in Groups to estimate the area of irregular shapes on the Shapes pages in the Student Activity Book.

In Social Studies, the students in Mr. Moreno's class are learning about the dangers of oil spills in the waters of the world. They use a computer program to learn about the effects of the oil spills on sea life and humans.

One computer report lists the area in square kilometers of several past oil spills. While working on the computer, Felicia and Roberto recall how they counted square centimeters to find the area of small, irregular shapes in math class before. They remember that several students in their class had different measurements for the area of an irregular shape. However, Mr. Moreno told most of the students that they were close in their measurements. Felicia and Roberto try to imagine the huge size of the oil spills. They wonder how the area of these spills are measured and how accurate the data are.