LEARN NC

K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Building a box

http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?ID=L570

A lesson plan for grades 6–7 Mathematics

Provider: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics


Learn more

Help

Please read our disclaimer for lesson plans.

Legal

This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.

In this lesson, students participate in a real-world situation that develops spatial visualization skills and geometric understanding. After reviewing relevant terms, the teacher demonstrates an example of how a net will fold into a cube. Then, students evaluate how many squares they must use from their grid paper in order to build a box.

Students will:

  • Create, compare and describe different two-dimensional nets that can be folded into a three-dimensional cube.
  • Examine the properties of the nets and resulting cubes, including surface area.
  • Use rotations and flips to compare various nets.

NCTM Standards and Expectations covered in this lesson include:

  • Identifying and drawing a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object.
  • Building and drawing geometric objects.
  • Identifying and building a three-dimensional object from two-dimensional representations of that object.
  • Precisely describing, classifying, and understanding relationships among types of two- and three-dimensional objects using their defining properties.
  • Using two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional objects to visualize and solve problems such as those involving surface area and volume.

North Carolina Curriculum Alignment

Mathematics (2004)

Grade 6

  • Goal 3: Geometry -The learner will understand and use properties and relationships of geometric figures in the coordinate plane.
    • Objective 3.03: Transform figures in the coordinate plane and describe the transformation.
    • Objective 3.04: Solve problems involving geometric figures in the coordinate plane.

Grade 7

  • Goal 3: Geometry - The learner will understand and use properties and relationships in geometry.
    • Objective 3.01: Using three-dimensional figures:
      • Identify, describe, and draw from various views (top, side, front, corner).
      • Build from various views.
      • Describe cross-sectional views.
    • Objective 3.02: Identify, define, and describe similar and congruent polygons with respect to angle measures, length of sides, and proportionality of sides.
    • Objective 3.03: Use scaling and proportional reasoning to solve problems related to similar and congruent polygons.