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Grade 5 Math · Level 4, Solids, Volume & Data

Surface Area

How the lesson starts: Surface Area

1. Penny's Wrap Shop

   Welcome to Penny's Wrap Shop! Penny covers every box in shiny paper, with no gaps and nothing extra. To know how much paper she needs, she adds the area of every outside face. That total is called surface area!

2. Unfold the box

   Unfold a gift box into a net, so every face lies flat. Count them: 6 faces. They come in 3 matching pairs: top and bottom, front and back, and the two sides. Surface area is measured in square units.

3. Wrap a cube

   A cube box has sides of 4. One face is 4 by 4, so its area is 16 square units. A cube has 6 faces, all the same. 6 × 16 = 96. The surface area is 96 square units!