Maths (area)

Friday 06 February 2026

In maths, Year 5 are learning all about area.

Perimeter is the distance all the way around the outside of a shape.

Area is the amount of space inside a shape.

We usually measure area in square units, like square centimetres or square metres. The children have started off strongly – they’ve been working out the area of shapes by counting all squares inside each shape. More recently, we have started to notice that the area of rectangles and squares can be calculated by:

length x width

width x length

Multiplication is commutative, so no matter which factor we put first, the product (or area in this case) will be the same result.

Year 5 were tasked with designing a floor plan for a school hall. We pretended that our current PE equipment had been removed and we decided to buy some new stuff! Our job was to fit the equipment in the hall effectively. To do this, we had to think about:

The children loved this task and did really well! Here are some examples of work from Emily, Emily and Elara.