5.MD.5 — Finding Volume of Rectangular Prisms
Practice finding the volume of right rectangular prisms by applying multiplication formulas to solve engaging real-world problems involving boxes, rooms, tanks, and more.
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Three different problem sets — same skill, same layout, fresh numbers.
Preview — Set A
Read each word problem carefully, then use V = l × w × h or V = b × h to find the volume.
- 1.A fish tank is 12 inches long, 6 inches wide, and 8 inches tall. What is the volume of the fish tank?
- 2.A moving box is 3 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 4 feet tall. What is the volume of the moving box?
- 3.A classroom is 30 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 10 feet tall. What is the volume of the classroom?
- 4.A brick measures 8 inches long, 4 inches wide, and 3 inches tall. What is the volume of the brick?
- 5.A swimming pool is 20 meters long, 10 meters wide, and 2 meters deep. What is the volume of the pool?
- 6.A cereal box is 9 inches tall, and its base has an area of 15 square inches. What is the volume of the cereal box?
- 7.A storage shed is 8 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 7 feet tall. What is the volume of the storage shed?
- 8.A gift box is 5 inches long, 5 inches wide, and 5 inches tall. What is the volume of the gift box?
- 9.A sandbox is 6 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 1 foot deep. What is the volume of sand needed to fill it completely?
- 10.A refrigerator compartment is 2 feet wide, 3 feet long, and 5 feet tall. What is the volume inside the refrigerator?
- 11.A rectangular garden bed is 9 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 2 feet deep. How much soil is needed to fill the garden bed?
- 12.A shipping container is 40 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 9 feet tall. What is the volume of the shipping container?
- 13.A juice box has a base area of 6 square centimeters and is 12 centimeters tall. What is the volume of the juice box?
- 14.A wooden block is 7 centimeters long, 4 centimeters wide, and 3 centimeters tall. What is the volume of the wooden block?
- 15.A room is being filled with boxes. The room is 15 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 8 feet tall. What is the total volume of the room?
- 16.An aquarium display case is 5 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 4 feet tall. What is the volume of the display case?
- 17.A rectangular water tank is 11 meters long, 5 meters wide, and 4 meters deep. What is the volume of the water tank?
- 18.A toy chest has a base area of 18 square feet and a height of 3 feet. What is the volume of the toy chest?
- 19.A block of cheese is 10 centimeters long, 8 centimeters wide, and 6 centimeters tall. What is the volume of the block of cheese?
- 20.A planter box on a balcony is 4 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 3 feet deep. What is the volume of the planter box?
- 21.A library book return bin is 2 feet wide, 3 feet long, and 4 feet tall. What is the volume of the book return bin?
- 22.A rectangular ice block used at a party is 18 inches long, 10 inches wide, and 5 inches tall. What is the volume of the ice block?
What this worksheet covers
There are 22 story problems here — one page to work, one page of answers to check against — and Sets B and C repeat the layout with different numbers. Within that, each problem arrives as a few sentences of context rather than a bare expression and answers carry units, and a number without its unit is only half an answer. Problems 8 and 15, for instance, are "A gift box is 5 inches long, 5 inches wide, and 5 inches…" and "A room is being filled with boxes. The room is 15 feet…". The sheet sits inside Common Core 5.MD.5, in the grade 5 Measurement & Data strand.
Skills practised
The grade 5 measurement sequence covers conversions with decimals, volume of rectangular prisms, and missing dimensions; this page sits inside it. What a student is asked to do here is finding Volume of Rectangular Prisms. To finish it, a student has to read a situation and choose an operation before computing. Eighteen different answers appear across the 22 problems, so a student cannot copy one result down the page.
About the word problems format
The 22 story problems each get a full line and an answer rule; problem 8, "A gift box is 5 inches long, 5 inches wide, and 5 inches…" is one, and the answer key writes the unit with every answer. Gardens, ribbons, tanks and trips are the reason measurement is taught; the numbers finally mean something.
Set A, Set B and Set C
Set A is the sheet as it was first published on MathSheetLab, and Sets B and C were derived from it problem by problem: each number became a slot redrawn with the same shape, and every answer was recomputed exactly. Where Set A's problem 12 is "A shipping container is 40 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 9…", Set B's is "A planter box is 19 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 2 feet…".
22 story problem(s) drawn from the 5.MD.5 context family (volume stories (l × w × h and base × height)) — parameters inferred from the standard and grade
How to use this worksheet
Give this word problems uninterrupted. At grade 5, measurement is where procedure and recall have to run at the same time, and 22 problems done in fragments hide which of the two is the problem. Use the key as a check, not as a grade; none of the 22 problems needs a score attached to be useful.
One mistake to watch for
Volume is found by adding the three dimensions. On this grade 5 word problems, problem 15 ("A room is being filled with boxes. The room is 15 feet…") is the kind of item where it shows.
The formula is half-remembered and addition is the default operation.
Build a small prism from unit cubes, count one layer, then count the layers.
Other grade 5 measurement formats
The same skill in the other formats available at this grade.
- Drill — Grade 5 Measurement Drill, 30 problems
- Timed Drill — Grade 5 Measurement Timed Drill, 72 problems
- Missing Number — Grade 5 Measurement Missing Number, 24 problems
- Mixed Review — Grade 5 Measurement Mixed Review, 30 problems
A step either side
The same format one grade down and one grade up — the easier sheet is often the faster fix when this one is not landing.
- 4.MD.1 — Measurement Conversions Word Problems — grade 4, 22 problems
Word Problems sheets in other grade 5 topics
No paywall and no account — download any set of this grade 5 measurement word problems, and the answers for all 22 problems are in the matching key.