Mr. Levy has worked with his class for several weeks on the pencil box project. The students have designed, planned, and built wooden pencil boxes for themselves. Now he wants them to estimate the amount of stain that the class should purchase so that students can stain the inside and outside of their boxes. In the following video segment (duration 6:54), you can watch Mr. Levy's students work on several aspects of this problem.

As you watch, think about how the students are making connections among several mathematical ideas as well as to real-life applications of mathematics, and try to imagine how your own students would tackle this task.

Please watch the video excerpt now.

  Think about the classroom