This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to give fifth graders an overview of forming figures with cutouts.

Students will design a pencil box utilizing popsicle sticks, painters tape, and cardboard. After designing, they will test it’s functionality with pencils and then measure the volume inside their box with unit cubes.

For this task, students find the volume and surface of rectangular prisms and devise and use problem solving strategies to explore situations mathematically.

Purpose: Engages students and introduces elements needed for building a playground.

In “Playground Palooza”, students will take the role of a playground designer responding to a request for a new playground at the school. Students will learn about numerical patterns, reading and writing decimals, rounding decimals, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing decimals, converting measurements, volume, measuring volume, relating volume, coordinate planes, and attributes of 2D figures. Students will determine the total area of the new playground, determine the total area for each structure you want included on your playground, determine the volume of sand needed for the sandbox, use at least three playground structures, create a table of equipment and materials including company name, cost, quantity, and totals, create a coordinate system to display the center point for each structures or area on the playground, and submit a blueprint of their playground design.

***NOTE
This PBL was created before NC adopted the NC standards for Math. Therefore this PBL also addresses: rounding decimals.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 5th Grade Math. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 5th Grade Math. 

In “Sandbox Frenzy”, students will take the role of a sandbox designer for the school. They will learn how to find the volume of a right rectangular prism as they design a new Pre-K sandbox to be used during recess. Students will create a 3D design for the playground. They will determine how many feet of wood they will need and how much sand will be need to fill the sandbox.

This document is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. The document includes books, websites, and other resources to support the teaching of Grade 5, Cluster 2. This is remixable.

This lesson is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. In this lesson students will apply their previous knowledge of finding the volume of rectangular prisms to more complex figures which can be decomposed into rectangular prisms. Students will explore the additive nature of volume in these types of figures.

This lesson is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. In this lesson, students explore finding volume of two non-overlapping rectangular prisms using the context of a toy factory called Cubix. It is remixable.

This lesson is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. In this lesson students will explore volume as additive using concrete objects and pictorial representations. This is remixable.

This lesson is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. In this lesson students will explore volume as additive by looking at non overlapping rectangular prisms. This is remixable.

This lesson is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. In this lesson students will use addition and/or multiplication to find volume, and discover formulas which can be used to find the volume of a right rectangular prism. It is remixable.

These parent/family letters are from Tools 4 NC Teachers. They can be sent home to parents at the beginning of Grade 5, Cluster 2. These are remixable.

This task is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. Students determine the volume of joined, non-overlapping rectangular prisms. This is remixable.

This task is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. Students explore a rectangular prism (box) and consider what the volume would be in different units. This is remixable.

This is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. This task provides the opportunity to engage in a rigorous task about volume with very large numbers. The multiplication and operations of the numbers align with the Grade 5 Standard, but the work with volume with such large numbers goes beyond the Standard. This is remixable.

This task is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. Students explore the dimensions of a rectangular prism and its volume. This is remixable.

This task is from Tools 4 NC Teachers. Students consider ways to organize rectangular prisms into different sizes of moving trucks. This is remixable.