Journal Article: Water Bottle Designs and Measures

Carmody, H.G. (2010). Water bottle designs and measures. Mathematics teaching in the middle school. 16(5), 272-279

This was a wonderful article, there were so many neat ideas and concepts introduced throughout the article! In the beginning of the article the author mentioned how students are excited about the unit of finding surface area and volume because of the authentic and hands on activities. Students will work ahead on homework because they actually enjoy what they are learning, and believe it or not, they discuss math concepts outside of the classroom. The article suggested having an engaging classroom and hands on activities that have open ended questions. I thought this was such a helpful article for future and new teachers because it breaks everything down. The article has a list of questions to make the lesson open ended and ways to incorporate higher order thinking. The is also tips to ensure that students fully comprehend the project or assignment. All the ideas listed are ones we discussed throughout the semester. (Which makes me super happy!) Ideas include having peer collaboration, written reflections, using manipulatives or visuals, project proposal, and algebraic notation.

The activity that is discussed in this article is actually a 19 day project, and there is an outline of the activity included in the article. This is yet another reason why this is such a fantastic journal. This shows that this project is a success and really helps students further their understanding. The water bottle activity is where students need to create an object that holds a specific amount of water. They need to sketch three drawings where they using mathematical terminology and explain which drawing is their favorite and why. The article concludes by introducing other ways to incorporate surface area and volume into the classroom, such as making race cars.

I thought this was a very useful article and had many interesting lessons throughout. My favorite part of the article was the beginning where the author gives the reader a schedule of the timeline of the unit. I thought this was very useful and laid how much time to spend introducing and reviewing the topic and then how much time should be spend creating the project. As a future teacher I have no idea how quickly or slowly my future students will learn, so it is nice to have a sample timeline to base lessons off of. I will most definitely use this lesson, because it seems super exciting!