Pyramids Snowball Quiz

This week we started finding the surface area and volume of pyramids. On Monday, we went over the following foldable. I have 2 deaf students this year in Geometry and I have learned that color coding certain pieces of information helps them understand the material better. I have had several interpreters come to me saying that geometry finally makes sense to them!

We started off the class period by labeling and identifying the important vocabulary terms that students will use throughout the unit. 

After the vocabulary terms, we jumped into finding the surface area and volume of a square pyramid, regular triangular pyramid, and regular hexagonal pyramid. 

This is the first year that I have used this flip-book and I have to say that I really liked it! I am also planning to use my other foldable (click here) as a review later on.

The next class period, we did a surface area and volume of pyramids "snowball quiz." I printed out the following document on colored cardstock (this helps when students are trying to find a new "snowball.") 

I posted question #1 on the board and told students that they had four minutes to solve it and put their answer on the box. 

After four minutes was up, I told them to crumple it up into a "snowball." They stared back at me for a solid 10 seconds before asking "Why?" I told students that they only had 30 seconds to throw the snowball to a different person in the classroom (time limit is a MUST). After 30 seconds, I kept question #1 posted on the board and told students to check the paper to see if it had any mistakes. If there were mistakes, they had 2 minutes to correct question #1. 

Repeat the same steps for question #2. After each question, I had a slide that showed all of the previous problems so students had something to reference when checking the work on the paper. 

After all of the questions were posted, I told students to crumple it up and put it in a box. I told them that I was only going to pick one paper and that it was going to be everyone's grade. 

Luckily, each class, I picked a WINNER!

Overall, all of my kids enjoyed this and I definitely wished that I could do this everyday since 99.9% of my students were engaged during the whole class period!

Here are the files for the snowball quiz: 

• Pyramids Snowball Questions
• Pyramids Snowball Answer Sheet