Area of rectangles and squares | Year 5 Maths Resources

## What you need to know

Things to remember:

• Draw a diagram and put the lengths on.
• Calculate the area as you would normally
• To find the area, we just multiply the sides.

Questions don’t always come with diagrams, so you will either have to imagine it in your head or draw it on paper.

What is the area of a rectangle that is 6m long and 2m high?

We can draw the rectangle, and it would look like this:

But we know how to find area of a rectangle, we just need to multiply the two sides.

$$6m \times 3m = 18m^{2}$$

Questions won’t always say which side is which, so you need to decide.

What is the area of a rectangle with side lengths of 5cm and 7cm?

The rectangle could look like one of these:

So, let’s find the area of both and see what happens.

$$5cm \times 7cm = 21cm^{2}$$

$$7cm \times 5cm = 21cm^{2}$$

We get the same answer, so it doesn’t matter! We just need to remember to multiply the sides together.

## Example Questions

$$5cm \times 3cm = 15cm^{2}$$

$$12cm \times11cm = 131cm^{2}$$