Students have been using hands on activities to learn about and apply their knowledge of volume. To start the unit, students used pattern blocks to build towers. They were able to find the volume of one prism, and then discovered that they could multiply the volume of one block by the number of blocks in their tower to find the tower's volume. Using this, students were able to generalize and determine that the volume of any prism is the area of its base times its height.
Using what they learned from the pattern block towers, students made the conclusion that the same procedure could work for cylinders. Students watched a video in which an 8.5 by 11 piece of paper was used to create two different cylinders, one with a height of 8.5 in and one with a height of 11 inches. The cylinders were then filled with popcorn. Students made predictions about whether or not the two cylinders would hold the same amount of popcorn, and if not, which would hold more. They then created these cylinders and poured popcorn in to determine if their predictions were correct.