Surface Area and Volume

Strand: Shape and Space (Measurement)
Outcomes: 3, 4

Step 3: Plan for Instruction

Guiding Questions

What learning opportunities and experiences should I provide to promote learning of the outcomes and permit students to demonstrate their learning?
What teaching strategies and resources should I use?
How will I meet the diverse learning needs of my students?

A. Assessing Prior Knowledge and Skills

Before introducing new material, consider ways to assess and build on students’ knowledge and skills related to the understanding of the attributes of perimeter and area. It is critically important that students understand the attribute that they are to measure. Students should also know that measurement is not precise—that it is estimation and so must have opportunities to practise estimating. Students should be given as much opportunity as possible to participate in hands-on activities that allow them to practise estimating, discover the characteristics of perimeter, area and volume, and develop appropriate formulas.

Ways to Assess and Build on Prior Knowledge

B. Choosing Instructional Strategies

Consider the following general strategies for teaching surface area/volume and surface area/volume formula development:

Concept Knowledge to Develop	Type of Activity to Use
Understand the attribute being measured. Understand how filling, covering, matching or marking other comparisons of an attribute with units produces what is called measure. Understand the way measuring instruments work.	Make comparisons based on the attribute. Use physical models of measuring units to fill, cover, match or make the desired comparison of the attribute with the unit. Make measuring instruments and use them along with acutal unit models to compare how each works.

(Reproduced from John A. Van de Walle, Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally, 4/e (p. 278). Published by Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Copyright © 2001 by Pearson Education. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

C. Choosing Learning Activities

Learning Activities are examples of activities that could be used to develop student understanding of the concepts identified in Step 1.

Sample Learning Activities
Development of Understanding of Area of Two Dimensional Objects	Download Activities
Surface Area of Rectangular and Triangular Prisms	Download Activities
Surface Area of a Cylinder	Download Activities
Modified Frayer Model – Surface Area	Download Activities
Surface Area – Application	Download Activities
Comparing Volume – Cylinders	Download Activities
Discovering Volume	Download Activities
Volume	Download Activities
Modified Frayer Model – Volume	Download Activities