Nothing But Nets!

Here is a little something I have been working on–Nothing But Nets.  I recently posted this on TPT.  I used this to teach a fifth grade class about what nets worked to build a cube without overlapping.  Before I used this lesson, I gave students some grid paper and asked them to find as many ways as they could to build a net for one cubic unit.  Then we posted all of the nets–ones that worked and ones that didn’t on a chart.  We grouped the nets into two sections so we could see the similar characteristics that made a net work or not work.  We gathered on the carpet for an up close look at the similarities among the nets.  Students made some good generalizations about what would make a net work such as the net must have 6 squares and be flexible enough to surround the cube.  Students also made generalizations about cubes that didn’t work.  Among students comments were these generalizations–they noticed nets that don’t work may have more or less than 6 faces and have squares clumped together.

After students had made these generalizations about nets, I gave them this activity for them to test their generalizations.  Students were given a series of 10 nets.  They predicted which would and wouldn’t work.  Then they were allowed to cut them out to test their predictions.  We grouped the nets again into categories that worked and that didn’t work.  Students began to notice more characteristics about the nets which made them work or not work.  After these two lessons, students did very well on their nets quiz.  Below is the nets activity I used which is available at TPT.

Nothing But Nets Lesson on TPT