Confectionery Awards

Teaching Ideas

Learning Objective: To be able to solve problems using volume and surface area.

Success Criteria: • Select and apply the correct formulae when calculating a value.

• Accurately substitute measurements into formulae

Context: This is a stand-alone lesson which would work well at the end of a topic on surface area and volume.
It would be an effective way to celebrate pi day.

Starter
Teacher-led class discussion about 3D shapes in the classroom. Try to ensure that there are some interesting shapes to allow
conversations about hemispheres, cones, frustums/truncated pyramids and cones. You may wish to bring in some carefully
selected sweets for this, as this will tie in particularly well with the main activity.

Main Activities
Marlon’s Sweets
Introduce the scenario of Marlon, who has a bag of sweets that he wishes to award prizes to. He wishes to find the sweets with
the: largest volume; largest surface area:volume ratio; and longest to eat per cm3.

The Contenders
Show students each of the sweet types Marlon has in his bag. The physical measurements of each sweet are given, as well as the
time taken to eat them. This is all the information the students need to work out which sweet wins which prize.

The Awards
Students have access to the key information about the sweet types on the Confectionery Awards Activity Sheet. Using this
information, the students should work in pairs or groups to rank the sweets according to each prize, showing their working to 3
significant figures.

Plenary
The class comes together to compare results and talk about what gives a shape a high surface area:volume ratio and what
this means in practical terms; you may want to talk about why a piece of paper or a leaf’s function is suited to having a high
surface area:volume ratio.