Lesson Plan
Exploring Capacity
Use this lesson to introduce the concepts of capacity and volume with young learners. This hands on lesson can be used as a scaffolded pre-lesson to Capacity Comparison.
Grade:
Subjects:
View aligned standards
Objectives
Academic
- Students will be able to directly compare two objects with a measurable attribute in common.
- Students will be able to recognize that different shapes have different attributes.
Language
Students will be able to compare the capacity of containers that have similar and different attributes with more complex phrases using sentence frames and partnerships for support.
Introduction
(5 minutes)- Gather the students together in a comfortable area and ask them to sit in a circle on the ground.
- Bring out the tin can, coffee mug, cylinder pencil holder, and rectangular tupperware container. Position the objects in the middle of the circle so all students can see them.
- Put students in partnerships with elbow partners and tell the students that they must decide together how to group the objects in the middle of the circle so that three of the items fit within a category they have created and one does not. Both partners should be prepared to explain to a different group how they agreed on a category and justify which item did not fit.
- Pass out a blank sheet of paper to each partnership and coloring materials. Give students a few minutes to sketch their ideas. Allow a few partnerships to share out their reasoning.