Perfect Squares and Square Roots

Strand: Number
Outcomes: 1 and 2

Step 1: Identify Outcomes to Address

Guiding Questions

What do I want my students to learn?
What can my students currently understand and do?
What do I want my students to understand and be able to do, based on the Big Ideas and specific outcomes in the program of studies?

See Sequence of Outcomes from the Program of Studies

Strand: Number

Grade 7

Grade 8

Grade 9

Specific Outcomes

Specific Outcomes
1.	Demonstrate an understanding of perfect squares and square roots, concretely, pictorially and symbolically (limited to whole numbers).
2.	Determine the approximate square root of numbers that are not perfect squares (limited to whole numbers).

Specific Outcomes
5.	Determine the square root of positive rational numbers that are perfect squares.
6.	Determine an approximate square root of positive rational numbers that are non-perfect squares.

Big Ideas

Perfect squares can be represented by a square region. The side length of the square region is the square root of the perfect square.
The product of two identical factors is a perfect square.
When you take the square root of a perfect square, the result is one of the two identical factors.
Squaring a number and taking the square root of the resulting product are inverse operations.
The square root of a non-perfect square can be approximated as a decimal.

Adapted from John A. Van de Walle and LouAnn H. Lovin. Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics: Grades 5–8, pp. 333, 334. Published by Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Education, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.