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Mathematics · Grade 6

Area, Surface Area and Volume

Learners find the areas of parallelograms, triangles and trapezoids by rearranging and decomposing them into rectangles, and extend this to composite polygons, including polygons drawn on the coordinate plane. They then unfold prisms and pyramids into nets to find surface area, and find volumes of boxes with fractional edge lengths by packing small cubes and with V = lwh.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 90 minutes
  • Area, surface area and volume check: 10 questions
  • Ways to answer: choose an answer, type a fraction, plot points, match pairs, type a number and sort into groups
See plans Included with Family, Teacher and School plans. Open in PlayOwl

What learners will discover

  • Find the areas of parallelograms and triangles by rearranging or decomposing them, and explain why A = bh and A = (1/2)bh work.
  • Find the areas of trapezoids and composite polygons by decomposing them into rectangles and triangles, including polygons drawn on the coordinate plane.
  • Represent prisms and pyramids with nets and use the nets to find surface area.
  • Find the volume of right rectangular prisms with fractional edge lengths by packing cubes with unit-fraction edges and with V = lwh and V = Bh.

Lessons

  1. Parallelograms and triangles 8 steps5 practiceabout 22 min
  2. Trapezoids, composite shapes and the coordinate plane 9 steps6 practiceabout 24 min
  3. Nets and surface area 8 steps5 practiceabout 22 min
  4. Volume with fractional edges 9 steps5 practiceabout 22 min
  5. Area, surface area and volume check 10 questions at the end

Keep exploring

Games to practice with

  • Number-Line HopHelp the frog hop to the right number — from counting to negative fractions.
  • Fraction BridgesSaw planks into equal parts, paint fractions, build bridges that match and lay planks end to end to add.
  • Ratio KitchenScale recipes, fill ratio tables and find the better buy.

More 6th grade math

Guide for grown-ups