Girl scout cookies - opening of surface area and volume

Today was the first day back from Spring break. Perhaps it was too early to get things going like I planned, so while I believe the activity and investigation are solid, what transpired was not overly effective today.

I started class by showing Girl Scout Cookies as posted by Dan Meyer on 101 questions. For those who don't know Dan Meyer, he has created and presented many engaging math activities and is worth checking out.

So, I played the following video to start class.

I then asked the class what questions come to mind. I gave the class a little time to discuss with their partner and then did a share out. The first question to come out was, "Why are we watching this video?" I told the class the questions should focus on the situation being depicted.

The next question to come out was, "What does this have to do with math?" Not great, but at least it related. There were long periods of silence as students struggled to come up with questions. The following is a representation of questions that came up:

• How many boxes does the cargo bay hold?
• Why does it have a Tennessee license plate?
• How would that many boxes affect the miles per gallon of the vehicle?
• Why didn't they fill the vehicle up entirely?
• How many more boxes could fit into the rest of the vehicle?

There actually weren't very many more questions than this, but I think you get the idea of how this was going.

I asked students what information they would need to answer the question about how many boxes would the cargo bay hold. One student said they would like to know the dimensions of the cargo bay. A second said they would like to know the dimensions of a cookie box. There was nothing else forthcoming.

I asked students how they could estimate the size of a cookie box. Again, no one had any idea. I asked how many students had ever sold or eaten girl scout cookies. Almost the entire class had, but still they had no idea about how large the box size would be.

I told students the could look up the dimensions of the cargo space. Students found that the cargo bay was 9.4 cubic feet. I asked what a cubic foot meant. No one had any idea. We discussed this a bit, but there was no connections being made. 

The dimensions of the box are given in centimeters. I asked how centimeters and feet or inches were related. Students found online that 1 in = 2.54 centimeters and that 1 ft = 30.48 centimeters. I asked what they would do with this information.

One student suggested multiplying the 9.4 by the 30.48. The result is 286.512. I asked what this value meant and what units were associated with the value. Again, students had no idea.

All of the students are in a science class of one sort or another. I asked if they had ever seen unit conversions. None recognized nor remember converting units in science class. I explained that there are 30.48 cm / ft and that there are 9.4 ft³ of cargo space. Multiplying these two values together has the effect of 9.4 ft ft ft x 30.48 cm / ft. When doing this multiplication, one student recognized that we would end up with a ft² and the value is 286.512 ft² cm. The resulting units are still not useful at this point.

This fiasco took up the entire period and students still had not estimated how many boxes would fit in the cargo space. I told students to use whatever knowledge they had to come up with an estimate. I'll see what they come up with next class.