| Lesson start ideas | Give a creative idea how to begin a lesson |
| Which subject | Mathematics |
| What age group | Year or Grade 9 |
| What topic | Volume ans surface area of right prisms |
| Quantity | 1 |
| Any other preferences |
Good morning, students! Today, we're going to dive into the world of three-dimensional objects and explore the concepts of volume and surface area of right prisms. But before we jump into our lesson, let's start with a fun activity - a "Prism Party!"
In this activity, we're going to create our own right prisms using different materials and shapes. Let's break up into groups of four and I'll give each group a set of materials including toothpicks, Play-Doh, and colored paper.
First, take some toothpicks and use them to build a right rectangular prism with a length of 6 centimeters, width of 4 centimeters, and height of 3 centimeters. This will be the base of your "Prism Party" creation. Once you've built the base of the right rectangular prism, use the Play-Doh to fill in the gaps and create a solid shape.
Next, use colored paper to create different polygons that will be the top faces of your right prism. Once you're happy with the shapes you've created, fix them to the top of your prism using toothpicks again. Make sure your polygons are congruent to one another so that you have an "equal-area" prism.
Finally, measure and write down the height, length, and width of your final prism, and calculate the volume and surface area of your creation.
After creating our prisms, let's discuss what we learned. What new vocabulary did we use today? What were some important features of the right rectangular prism? How did we calculate the volume and surface area of our creations?
Congratulations, everyone! We've successfully completed our "Prism Party" activity and learned some important concepts about right prisms along the way. In our next lesson, we'll explore more complex types of three-dimensional objects and continue to deepen our understanding of volume and surface area.