Curated OER
Shipping Rolled Oats
What better way to start your day than with a box of oatmeal? Or what better way to start your geometry class than by calculating its volume? Eighth graders discover just how practical volume computation can be in business and in breakfast!
Illustrative Mathematics
Computing Volume Progression 1
Finding the volume of a right rectangular prism is the focus of the resource. Worksheet includes a drawing of a cube to help learners visualize the concept. Young geometers will learn that as the side length increases, so does the...
Illustrative Mathematics
Computing Volume Progression 4
This resource was written for the younger math learner, but finding the volume of an irregular solid is also a problem for algebra and geometry students. Based on Archimedes’ Principle, one can calculate the volume of a stone by...
Illustrative Mathematics
Computing Volume Progression 3
Learners are given a volume of a rectangular tank and are asked to find the water height. Because the total volume of the tank is given in liters, your geometers will need to use a unit ratio to convert to centimeters cubed. The exercise...
101 Questions
Building Boxes
Build foundational knowledge of volume by building boxes. Given dimensions for a piece of grid paper, young mathematicians determine the number of possible open-top boxes it will make. As part of this task, they also find the box with...
Illustrative Mathematics
Box of Clay
What happens to a volume when you scale the dimensions of a rectangular prism? In this problem, a box of clay is increased in each dimension, with the intent to see if learners can generalize the result. The addition of...
Illustrative Mathematics
Christo’s Building
Hook your charges on how to solve a real-world art problem with mathematics by showing works of Christo. You can find eye-catching images on the Christo and Jeanne Claude webpage. Here, math learners help Jean Claude and Christo prepare...
Illustrative Mathematics
Computing Volume Progression 2
Once your geometers know how to apply the formula V = l w h, they will be ready to take on the fractional volume of a fish tank. Have your number crunchers swap heights so they can see that the fractional volume will not change.
101 Questions
Girl Scout Cookies
How many Girl Scout cookies can you fit in a trunk? Learners consider this question after watching a video of an SUV being filled to the top with single boxes of the cookies. They use measurements of the trunk and the box of cookies to...
Teach Engineering
Build the Biggest Box
Boxing takes on a whole new meaning! The second installment of the three-part series has groups create lidless boxes from construction paper that can hold the most rice. After testing out their constructions, they build a new box....
Digital Lesson
Cereal Box Surface Area
How much math can your learners pour out of a cereal box? Your middle schoolers will explore their favorite cereal and calculate the surface area, volume, and weight ratios and log this information on the provided worksheet. They get to...
101 Questions
Coffee Traveler
Investigate the volume of irregular figures in an inquiry-based exercise. Presented with an irregularly shaped box filled with water, learners must predict the level of water when it is tipped on its side. The class can divide...
Illustrative Mathematics
Cari's Aquarium
The volume of a fish tank is a rather important measure when it comes to building an aquarium for different species of fish. In this problem, your kids look at how many different ways they can make a fish tank of a specific volume,...
Teach Engineering
Determining Densities
Don't be dense—use a robust resource. The second installment of a five-part Floaters and Sinkers unit has learners determine the densities of several objects. As part of the activity, they learn the displacement method for finding...
Other
Tap Into Teen Minds: Prisms and Pyramids
A detailed set of tasks for investigating the volume of prisms and pyramids.
University of Regina (Canada)
University of Regina: Math Central: Surface Area to Volume Ratio
Students will investigate the relationship between surface area and volume and their application to the inner workings of real life organisms.
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Drawing 3 Dimensional Figures
In this activity, students learn to draw a three-dimensional figure using Isometric Dots in the Explorer Draw App on the calculator. They also find the area and volume of a rectangular prism. [Requires Adobe Reader.]
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: New Boxes From Old
Students find the volume and surface area of a rectangular box (e.g., a cereal box), and then figure out how to convert that box into a new, cubical box having the same volume as the original. As they construct the new, cube-shaped box...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Boxes Go Mobile
To display the results from the previous activity, each student designs and constructs a mobile that contains a duplicate of his or her original box, the new cube-shaped box of the same volume, the scraps that are left over from the...
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Stuff It!
In this activity, students learn to calculate volume of a sphere and a rectangular prism. They explore methods of determining how many volleyballs can be placed in a room.
Ministry of Education and Universities of the Region of Murcia (Spain)
Ministerio De Educacion Y Ciencia: Volumenes De Cuerpos Geometricos
In Spanish. Interactive resources and activities that could be used in the classroom either as an introduction or review to a unit dealing with the volume of three dimensional figures.