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Invite students individually or in pairs to organise a pair of empty milk bottles, cans or drinking containers of varying sizes from those they think hold the most water, to those that hold the least water.
Test their theories by using their favourite cup to pour cups of water to fill each container.
Having the cup capacity recorded by either a parent, teacher, friend or fellow student, discuss their estimation versus which holds the most and least.
Pairs can be extended to multiple objects and different uniform informal units such as glasses, pails or spoons can be used.
Use and encourage appropriate descriptive language - same as, more than, less than, most, least, full and empty.
Critical Thinking:
Students will learn to apply the basic language and attributes of capacity across real-world, everyday items they interact with.
Estimation will assist with their exploration irregular and abstractions of shapes which are not traditionally taught in class at this level.
Communication:
Students will be learning to communicate appropriate mathematical language, using more than, less than, equal to or same as alongside least and most.
Collaboration:
Students may foster this by engaging in this as a pair or with a friend, organising their cups as a group and discussing their findings as a group or class.
Creating and Innovation:
Students may bring or make their own containers, being asked to see if they can find or make a container that holds more, less or the same amount as an existing container.
Enabling Prompt:
Organise the objects in order beforehand - have the students fill them and explain why one holds 'more', 'less', or 'the same' amount as the other.
Extension:
Students may engage in the ‘creating and innovation’ activity noted above, creating or finding their own container(s) to use.
Containers of increasingly similar sizes or those which have complex shape structures can be introduced.
Once successfully completed, have students or pairs take their containers to another pair and see if they can conduct the same activity with all of their containers combined within the larger group.
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