Finding Volume

On Friday students investigated how to find the volume of a rectangular prism.  If they already knew the formula, sixth graders were asked to prove why it worked! Students were given a box and asked how many cubes would fit in the box.  Some students took the l x w x h to find an answer.  Another popular strategy was to take the area of the base and then multiply that by the height.  Here is a snapshot of our conversations from one math class where a student was explaining that once her group found the area of one "layer", they could multiply that by how many total layers could fit in the box.