Finding the areas of shapes on grids by counting squares

The squares on this grid are 1cm x 1cm, so the area of each square is 1cm².

What is the area of the shape on this grid? The shape covers 8 squares, so the area is 8cm².

Being well-organised helps. One idea is to count down the rows and tick them off as you do so. This will help to avoid mistakes.

Area of triangles

You can find the area of triangles by following these steps:

• Make the triangle into a rectangle.
• Count the squares in the rectangle.
• Halve the number of squares in the rectangle (i.e., divide them by 2).

To find the area of this triangle,

you first make it into a rectangle:

The area of the rectangle is 30cm². So the area of the triangle will be half of this. The area of the triangle is 15cm².