Covering a Wishing Well

In this assessment, students work through two different methods of finding the area of a cover for a circular wishing well using only rectangular pieces with as little extra material as possible. Throughout the task, students apply methods of approximation to get increasingly closer to the actual area of a circle, at first by using a square grid (Achievement Levels 1-4) and then by using an increasing number of rectangular strips (Achievement Levels 5-8). Students explain the level of accuracy and whether their method makes sense.