49- Volume

Even when they frustrate me, I have to admire my students’ creativity. All brains were in full imaginative throttle when I taught Math this afternoon. We are in the midst of a unit on geometry, and today I wanted to discuss volume. I began the lesson by testing the students’ prior knowledge. It is useful to pretest and find out what they know before you start to teach, this way you don’t waste valuable time going over information the kids are already familiar with.
To start, I simply asked, “Who can tell me what volume is?”
Hands shot into the air, and I felt relieved to see that volume would be a familiar topic.
I called on reliable Francesca to get the ball rolling. “Francesca, tell the class about volume.”
Francesca took a deep breath. “Well, a volume is one book of many books. Like if you got the C book from the set of encyclopedias, you would have picked Volume C.”
Okay- a perfectly intelligent and correct answer, just not the one I’m looking for.
“Yes. Francesca is correct. One type of volume is when you have a single book that forms a part or the whole of a set of written work. Can anyone tell me about another type of volume?” I saw Robbie waving his hand desperately in the air. “Robbie?”
Before Robbie could answer, Josh pointed at Robbie and screamed out, “SOAPY BUTT! SOAPY BUTT!”
Robbie turned bright red and laid his head on his desk.
Next, I called on Gaby, one of my best math students. Gaby, who loves to let others know how smart she is, stood up to answer. “Volume is how quiet or loud things get. For example, I like to watch The Gilmore Girls after school. Sometimes, when I am watching, my brothers get annoying and loud. I have to turn up the volume on the television, just to be able to hear my show. Volume.” Gaby repeated the last word as if she was in a Spelling Bee, and then she sat down.
Oh my god. She’s right, too!
Before I could reiterate that Gaby was correct, and that I was still looking for another meaning of volume, Robbie spoke up.
The kid had clearly recovered from Josh’s insult. “No, you stupid dummies,” Robbie is often frustrated by his classmates, most likely because he is mentally one step ahead of them. Since he is one of my favorites, I ignored the insult and let the boy continue.
Robbie went on sarcastically, “Didn’t anybody notice that we are having math class right now? We are studying geometry. Do you really think Teacher is talking about books and noise right now?”
His classmates sat still and quiet, waiting to hear what Robbie said next. I heard Gaby mutter, “I am not a dummy,” under her breath.
“Kramer’s pretty dumb!” Kathleen chimed in.
Why are these kids so mean to each other? I also ignored Kathleen’s insult.
“The kind of volume we’re talking about here is the math kind of volume. Duh! Volume is either the amount of space taken up by a three dimensional object, or the capacity of space that object can hold.” Robbie grinned at me. “Am I right, or what, Teacher?”
He was right, as usual. I jumped on Robbie’s correct answer and used it as a launching point for our lesson. The class, feeling challenged by Robbie, was determined to make up for their lack of knowledge. I had everyone’s attention.
Things were on a roll, until Hannah raised her hand. “Teacher, what about if someone said something like, ‘the actors received volumes of praise for their performance.’ What kind of volume would that be?”
I wanted to kill her.