Block Dogs Come to Life to teach Surface Area and Volume

Students in Jay Spadano's 6th grade math class were busy building "block dogs" this week. Students started with 13 plastic cubes and the challenge to build a dog. Once the dog was built, they needed to calculate the volume and surface area. Volume was easy for the group--surface area proved to be a challenge!

Part two was to build the dog using a flat paper net. What would the dog model look like if it were on a flat piece of graph paper?

Once the paper dog was was built, the challenge was to scale the dog up (choose your own scale factor...some students were making it 2X, others were working on as big as 4X). The final step will be to calculate the area and surface volume for the newly enlarged creature.

Below are some pictures of the lesson in action...