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Have you ever wondered how to teach volume of rectangular prism to your 6th graders? Or struggled with explaining which two formulas can you use to find volume of rectangular prisms and why are these two formulas equivalent?
Use this artistic, real-life lesson plan to teach your students about volume of rectangular prisms. Students will learn material with guided notes (like sketch notes) and practice with a doodle and color by number activity and a maze activity to cover the concept.
Then, it concludes with a real life application of volume for moving to a new city. Students learn about the importance of calculating the volume of rectangular prisms to determine what size moving truck you need for all your boxes.
- Grade: 6th Grade
- Type: Lesson Plans
- Duration: 2 Hours
- Standard: CCSS 6.G.A.2
- Topic: Surface Area & Volume
Learning Objectives
After this lesson, students will be able to:
Find the volume of rectangular prisms by counting
Use the formula to find the volume of rectangular prisms
Apply the concept of volume of rectangular prisms in real-life situations, such as calculating the necessary truck size for a move
Note: This just covers volume of rectangular prisms. For surface area, see my Surface Area of Rectangular Prisms lesson plan. For other shapes, see my Volume of Cylinders, Cones, Spheres lesson plan.
Prerequisites
Before this lesson, students should be familiar with:
Basic multiplication and division skills of whole numbers and decimals
Understanding of the concept of area
Familiarity with basic geometry terms, such as width, height, and length
Materials
Pencils
Colored pencils or markers
Volume of Rectangular Prisms Guided Notes
Key Vocabulary
Rectangular prism
Volume
Base
Length, Width, Height
Cubic units
Procedure
Introduction
As a hook, ask students whether they’ve ever planned a move before, and how they decided what size truck they needed. Pivot into a discussion of rectangular prisms. Refer to the real-life application section of the lesson plan for ideas.
Use the guided notes to introduce the concept of volume of rectangular prisms. Walk through the key points of the topic of the guided notes to teach. Refer to the FAQs below for a walk through on this, as well as ideas on how to respond to common student questions.
Practice
Have students work through the problems on practice page, either collaboratively or independently. Walk around and spot-check student answers on the check for understanding activity, or call on students around answers they’ve picked and have students come up to the whiteboard and demonstrate.
The practice page is divided into two sections, volume by counting, and volume by formula. This split gives a moment to break to discuss the answers of one problems before moving on.
Based on student responses, reteach concepts that students need extra help with. If your class has a wide range of proficiency levels, you can pull out students for reteaching, and have more advanced students begin work on the practice exercises.
Have students practice finding the volume of rectangular prisms using the Doodle Math activity. Walk around to answer student questions.
Fast finishers can dive into the maze activity for extra practice. You can assign it as homework for the remainder of the class.
Real-Life Application
Bring the class back together, and introduce the concept of calculating the volume of rectangular prisms when packing boxes for a move. Discuss how it's important to choose the right size truck, so you don't end up with too little space or waste money on a truck that's too big. Have students brainstorm other real-life situations where it might be important to calculate the volume of a rectangular prism, such as building a bookshelf or filling a fish tank. Refer to the FAQs for more ideas on how to teach it.
Extensions
Hands-on project
If you’re looking for a way for your kinesthetic learners to engage with 3D shape nets, why not have them build emoji and Minecraft characters from 3D shape nets?
There’s different versions depending on your students’ needs:
Whole numbers. Practice finding surface area and volume of 3D shape nets with whole numbers, and end the activity with a version of Steve!
Fractions. Practice finding surface area and volume of 3D shape nets with whole numbers, and end the activity with a version of the Creeper.
You can also buy both as a bundle, and let students choose which to build.
FAQs
A rectangular prism is a three-dimensional shape that has six faces, each of which is a rectangle. It is also sometimes referred to as a rectangular cuboid or a rectangular parallelepiped.
Surface area refers to the total area of all the faces of a 3D object, while volume refers to the amount of space that a 3D object occupies. Surface area is measured in square units (such as square meters or square inches), while volume is measured in cubic units (such as cubic meters or cubic inches).
To calculate the volume of a rectangular prism, you need to multiply its length, width, and height. Here are the steps to do so:
Identify the length, width, and height of the rectangular prism: For example, if a rectangular prism has a length of 4 cm, a width of 3 cm, and a height of 5 cm, then those are the three dimensions.
Multiply the length, width, and height together: Using the dimensions from the previous step, multiply 4 cm x 3 cm x 5 cm to get 60 cubic cm.
Write the answer with the appropriate units (cubic units): The answer is 60 cubic cm.
The formula for calculating the volume of a rectangular prism is: V = l x w x h
Where:
Vis the volume of the rectangular prismlis the length of the rectangular prismwis the width of the rectangular prismhis the height of the rectangular prism
For example, if a rectangular prism has a length of 5 cm, a width of 3 cm, and a height of 2 cm, the volume would be:
V = 5 cm x 3 cm x 2 cm = 30 cubic cm
Therefore, the volume of the rectangular prism is 30 cubic cm.
Finding volume by counting involves physically counting the number of cubes or unit cubes that make up the rectangular prism. This method is useful for small or irregularly shaped rectangular prisms.
Using the formula for volume involves multiplying the length, width, and height of the rectangular prism. This method is more efficient for larger, regular rectangular prisms.
For example, consider a rectangular prism that is 3 units long, 2 units wide, and 4 units tall.
To find the volume by counting, you would count the number of unit cubes within the rectangular prism, which is 24.
To find the volume using the formula, you would multiply the length, width, and height together, which is 3 x 2 x 4 = 24.
Knowing how to calculate the volume of a rectangular prism can be useful in many real-life situations, such as:
Moving: Calculating the volume of boxes can help you determine the right size of truck you need for your move, preventing you from renting a truck that is too small or too large.
Building shelves or furniture: Knowing the volume of a rectangular prism can help you determine the amount of material you need for building shelves or furniture.
Filling a fish tank: Calculating the volume of a fish tank can help you determine how much water you need to fill it.