Year 5 · Summer term · Volume · Step 3
Year 5 Estimate volume worksheets
Estimate the volume of a solid using cubes, using known sizes, and choose a sensible volume for an object. A free editable Word sheet with eight fluency and six reasoning questions. The answers follow the questions: the same sheet again with every answer in red.
Download the worksheets
Print on A4 portrait: every page carries the sheet twice, side by side, so you can cut down the middle and two pupils each get a half to stick in their books. Every question sits in its own box and pupils write their answers in their book. The answers follow the questions in the file: the same sheet again with every answer in red. It opens in Word, Google Docs, Pages and LibreOffice, so you can change numbers, delete questions or add your own. There is no scaffolded version of this step yet.
Not scaffolded sheet
The same questions without the extra support. For pupils working at the expected standard: eight fluency questions first, then the reasoning questions.
Sample questions from this step
These are real questions from the first set of the sheet (two from the fluency page, two from the reasoning page). Open each one to see the answer.
- Rosie uses cubes to estimate the volume of a wedge. Each cube has a volume of 1 cm³. There are no hidden cubes.Estimate of the volume of the wedge: ____ cm³
Show the answer
6
- A fridge holds 30 bottles of water. A shopkeeper uses 25 cubes to estimate the volume of one bottle. Each cube has a volume of 5 cm³.Estimate of the volume of one bottle: ____ cm³Estimate of the volume of the fridge: ____ cm³
Show the answer
125; 3,750
- A shopkeeper is estimating the volume of a fridge. The fridge holds 24 bottles of water. The shopkeeper uses cubes to estimate the volume of one bottle: it takes 30 cubes, and each cube has a volume of 10 cm³.Estimate of the volume of the fridge: ____ cm³Does this mean that all fridges have the same volume? Explain.
Show the answer
7,200; No. Fridges come in different sizes, so they hold different numbers of bottles.
- A tank is about 60 cm long, 25 cm wide and 40 cm high. 1 litre is 1,000 cm³.Estimate of the volume of the tank: ____ cm³How many litres is that? ____ litres
Show the answer
60,000; 60
What is on each sheet
- Fluency: eight questions that start easy and get harder, with the key skill of the step practised in different ways.
- Reasoning: questions with pictures, tables and number lines (spot the mistake, true or false and explain, puzzles with one answer, an open-ended task).
- Answers in the same file: the sheet again with every answer in red, so there is only one file to download.
- Boba characters give the instructions in speech bubbles. They are decoration only.
Why one set of questions?
- Everyone works on the same content, and support comes from scaffolds instead of different, easier tasks. This follows the mastery approach described by the NCETM and the thinking in Ofsted's 2021 mathematics research review.
- Worked examples and visual representations lighten the load for pupils who need it, as the Education Endowment Foundation describes.