I'll be starting SOL 7.8 next week (Surface Area and Volume of Cylinders and Rectangular Prisms). Our school in general had great success last year with this SOL. One of the strategies I like to do is to involve as many household and hands on items as possible. One assignment I used last year was to have students find 3 rectangular prisms and 3 cylinders in their home and determine the surface area and volume of each. This allowed them choice in the assignment and many were drawn to their favorite possessions. In the classroom I set up a "yardsale" with items I owned that involve circles, cylinders, and prisms. For instance: tires, razor scooters, bicycles, boxes, etc. Students were grouped into pairs and had to measure and compute to get the volume and surface area as appropriate. We also took a "field trip" to the cafeteria and media center to measure columns and pillars and perform computations. These were, of course, after the students received step by step instuctions on how to solve these problems. I made these step almost identical to how we taught SOL 7.7 .