Give the students a warm-up quiz over surface area and volume.

1. What is the surface area of a triangular prism?

2. What is the diameter of a cylindrical cup with a volume of 64 cm3 and a height of 8?

3. What is the surface area and volume of a rectangular prism that has a length of 5 inches, height of 8 inches, and width of 2 inches.

Draw a picture to support your answer.

Students may not be able to recall the information from the previous day.

May have trouble solving for the radius in number 2.

Have students get into groups of four and give each student a container of play-dough, a ruler or measuring tape, a plastic knife. Each group will be given a list of objectives to complete.

Step 1: Construct the following objects from the play-dough provided (each object using a different color, using all of the play-dough provided)—Rectangular Prism, Square Pyramid, Triangular Prism, Cone.

Step 2: Calculate the dimensions (height, length, width, radius, etc.), volume, and surface area of each object.  Record results in a table (p = 3.14).

(taken from resource website)

May not know how to calculate the volumes.

Since they are working in groups, one person may do the majority of the work.  

Ask the students a series of discussion questions that have been taken from the website.

Discussion Questions

1) Which calculations (height, surface area, radius, etc) were the same for each object?

2) Which were calculations were different?

3) How do the sizes of the objects compare? (Are some larger than others? Smaller? The same? Which ones?)

4) How did the choice of dimensions affect the surface area and size of each object?

5) Why do you think that there are different surface areas even thought they have the same volume?

Students may have difficulty coming up with their own conjectures about the surface areas and volumes about different objects.

Have students discuss the answers to their discussion questions with people from other groups to see what they compared. 

What were your conclusions?

May have trouble with the entire assignment.

Have each student individually turn in the work they did for the day and write one thing they noted about surface area, one thing they noted about volume, and one thing they noted about the two of them together.

What are three things you learned about surface area and volume today?

Could you apply this to your project? If so, how?

May still not grasp the concept.

Could be discouraged from the subject.

Might have gotten off task and not gotten the work done.