Unit Plan Canvas

In designing a lesson plan for areas, volumes, and surface areas, I knew that I had plenty of material to work with. For some reason, teachers find this topic incredibly appealing, most likely because it is a very concrete, and visual concept, and it shows that math can be practical (formulas, relationships, ratios, etc.) and fun (boxes, blocks, and building!). But, as much as teachers love teaching this concept, I find that often they focus more on the fun and rational and less on the relationships. And so for my lesson plan I really wanted to focus on the relationship between areas, volumes, and surface areas. To do this I specifically chose videos, links, photos, and applets that showed how volumes can be thought of as an expansion of a flat area through space. This, then, showed that by taking the area of a base, we can use this to get a formula for the volume of a 3D shape. And to get students thinking about this I prompted them with questions about "stacking areas" and what they can get by doing this. Likewise, I included links to applets, explanations, and a video showing how 3D shapes can be broken down into 2D shapes whose areas can be solved to get surface area. By doing this I can get students getting a deeper understanding of the relationship between areas, volumes, and surface areas and have them think in a more abstract and 3D way.
Linked here is my lesson plan for reference.