Surface Area....Trying It Out

Anthoula was part of our Grade 6 lesson study a few weeks ago and she really liked the activity that she saw.  She had set a personal goal for herself of trying to do more small group problem solving, and thought that the lesson she saw in Brian's class would be a great place to start.

For her minds on, she had the students brainstorm a definition of what surface area is.  Then they co-created a list of steps to take in order to successfully find out the surface area of any shape.

For the action, the class was divided into small groups based on their abilities.  Each group was given a box and the students were each assigned a task to do based on the box.  The tasks were:  create a net, justify what polygons are in the figure, find the area of each face and finally find the surface area of the box.  They then had to give an example of when they would need to use surface area.  The students were reminded to refer to the success criteria that is being created when working on their activity.

Here are some samples of the students work.

 

To consolidate the lesson, Anthoula offered each group descriptive feedback on what was done well, and what could be changed to help make their answer better.  For some students, she even allowed them the opportunity to reflect on what they could have added (based on the success criteria) to make their answer stronger.