Story: In this Math Vitamin the students are working to determine the volume of their own unique fish tank designs. Having recently adopted Coho salmon eggs from a local hatchery, the kids were very much interested in the mechanics of raising fish in an aquarium and the teachers capitalized on this enthusiasm with several Math Vitamins focused on the concept of area and volume. The students have been using different manipulatives to calculate area and volume. Today each child was given specific measurements for length, width, and height and are solving for their tank’s volume. Our intent on this particular Math Vitamin is to introduce students to the geometry of rectangular solids and working to determine their length, width, height and combining them to discover their volume. Learning what each dimension represents has been a key part to making this Math Vitamin successful. The students first worked to understand the dimensions: length, or long side, the width, or short side, and the height, how many blocks tall. Once they were able to build their design, they then counted the total number of blocks used for their fish tank to determine its total volume in cubic inches. All Math Vitamins require students to build, draw and record their work as well as share their thoughts with peers and teachers. The strong UCDS math community within each classroom is developed through the process of peer and teacher conversations that focus on exciting mathematical tasks and engaging ideas about the various approaches to solve them.

Suggested manipulatives: When children start to explore the concepts of area and perimeter you can use all sorts of non-standard measurement items like hands, scissors, toothpicks, beans, plastic bears etc. to learn the conepts. Once you move into exploring volume, you’ll need to use items that can be stacked. We usually choose one inch cubes for this initial work. For some students they are still counting one-to-one and for others they actually start to see the “cubic inches”.

Prep time: Adapting the vitamin wording to fit your specific story, putting manipulatives out in the room, creating the data sheets and copying the vitamin documentation forms will take about 15-20 minutes. Set up is always more fun and shorter on time if you do this activity with a colleague.

Classroom time: Asking children to “do their best work” for each Math Vitamin assumes that some children will need a longer time than others. Ideally you want to offer a block of time for Math Vitamin projects and have another task available (writing, free exploration etc.) for those students who finish work prior to their peers. For this project allow 30-45 minutes for students to work through all the steps.

How to individualize/stretch: In this vitamin, the teachers have pre-drawn a unique rectangular shape on one-inch grid paper for each child. Some tanks are larger than others based on the individual student’s level of understanding. To start with volume, consider making the first few tanks only two layers tall. For the children who are ready for more, start to use centimeter cubes and have them start finding patterns for square and cubed numbers as they build their projects.