In cooperative/collaborative groups, students will compare and contrast a two-dimensional pattern and a three-dimensional shape. Students will use a net to label and then construct a rectangular prism. Students will find the surface area of a rectangular prism. As a final performance task, students will create a message box.
Use your spatial reasoning skills to calculate the surface area when given a 3D figure. This video focuses on a right rectangular prism and shows you how unit blocks can help you visualize, then calculate the surface area.
Module 5 concludes with deconstructing the faces of solid figures to determine surface area. Students note the difference between finding the volume of right rectangular prisms and finding the surface area of such prisms. In Lesson 15, students build solid figures using nets. They note which nets compose specific solid figures and also understand when nets cannot compose a solid figure. From this knowledge, students deconstruct solid figures into nets to identify the measurement of the solids’ face edges. With this knowledge from Lesson 16, students are prepared to use nets to determine the surface area of solid figures in Lesson 17. They find that adding the areas of each face of the solid will result in a combined surface area. In Lesson 18, students find that each right rectangular prism has a front, a back, a top, a bottom, and two sides. They determine that surface area is obtained by adding the areas of all the faces. They understand that the front and back of the prism have the same surface area, the top and bottom have the same surface area, and the sides have the same surface area. Thus, students develop the formula SA = 2lw + 2lh + 2wh (6.G.A.4). To wrap up the module, students apply the surface area formula to real-life contexts and distinguish between the need to find the surface area or volume within contextual situations.
