Good Evening,
I am looking to create a lesson for 6th grade to meet the following standard. Determine the surface area of triangular and rectangular prisms (including cubes). If you have any lessons or ideas, I would greatly appreciate it. @Aimee_DeFoe @AlainaHaws @Jimmy_Lin @Tina_Dietrich
Good question! I want to brainstorm a bit more about this idea when we get back into the office after VEX Worlds and the Educators Conference.
I think we could probably build on this from a different idea that was shared related to calculating the volume of prisms with fractional edge lengths. Students could also calculate the surface area of that prism they create.
Perfect…
Here’s a possible idea for determining the surface area of rectangular prisms (which you could definitely also use for cubes). As @AlainaHaws suggested, it is inspired by the previous community post about calculating the volume of prisms.
You could build a rectangular prism using the IQ Kit:
There are many ways to build a rectangular prism using the kit, but I used these pieces:
Students could calculate what they believe the surface area of each side will be using the 1/2 inch segments on the pieces, then wrap the prism in paper, measure, and confirm their earlier calculations. That way there is actually a surface involved, rather than the space between IQ pieces on each face, if that makes sense.
Hope this is helpful!
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Very helpful, Thanks so much!
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