What’s the Matter?
Author(s): Stacey David
Subject: Chemistry
Grade Level(s): Grade 3
Big Idea(s): Students will learn that matter exists in one of three forms: solid, liquid, or gas.
What you need: baggies, hair gel, water, cooking oil, marbles, life savers, cotton balls, coffee beans, sugar, paper clips, student science notebooks, matter worksheet, exit slip worksheet, and pencils
Setting: Students with a partner to complete the lab. One student is in charge of handling the objects, and the other student records the observations.
Time Needed: 60 minutes
Summary:
In this lesson students will learn: matter is anything that takes up space. The three basic states of matter are solid, liquid, and gas. A solid has definite shape and volume. A liquid has a constant volume but no definite shape. A gas has neither a fixed shape nor volume. Properties can be used to describe and identify matter.
Learning Goals / Objectives:
Students will classify objects according to their own classification conclusions and justify why objects fit in each category.
Background
This lesson is used at the start of the physical science unit. This will be students’ first exposure to the states of matter.
Setup:
Prior to start of lesson fill baggies with various liquids, solids, and gases (e.g. hair gel, water, cooking oil, marbles, life-savers, cotton balls, coffee beans, air, sugar, paper clip, etc.). Each baggie should be labeled with a letter (A, B, C, etc.) to help students’ discuss the materials.
Anticipatory Set:
Have students do a pair share about how they sort things at home. (Give students a card with an object to talk about sorting if they can’t think of anything to talk about. i.e. socks, shirts, pants, toys)
Ask students: What kinds of things have you had to sort at school? How does sorting help us learn about different things?
Instructions / Activities:
1) Pose lesson inquiry question: What makes objects different or similar to one another?
2) Tell students, “Today we are going to be classifying different objects into three categories. I am not going to tell you what the categories are, you are going to discover them on your own. You will get a set of containers containing different states of matter as described in the materials section of this lesson.”
3) Teacher to students: “You will be working with your partner. You will take turns picking a baggie and deciding what category to put it in. When you place in it a category you have to say why you put it there. Both partners record on their own papers.”
4) Teacher to students: “Your job is to classify the stuff inside the container according to some scheme that makes sense to you and fill out your chart with what you think is in the bag and what category it belongs to.”
5) Ask students: “Do you think you came up with three different categories of matter? Why or why not?” Choose a few groups to come up and share and justify their results.
6) The teacher should guide students in the development of common names for each category. If students agree on names that are different from liquid, solid, and gas, the teacher can explain that scientists had a similar discussion, and the names scientists’ ended up with are “solid, liquid, and gas”. The teacher should introduce the term “matter” and explain these categories are called “states of matter” by scientists.
Have students change their tree maps to match yours with correct answers. Also write some qualities of each type of matter on the chart in the baggie area.
Ie: Solid: has its own shape, doesn’t change shape, doesn’t flow, can see it
Liquid: goes to bottom of container, can see it, doesn’t spread over all container
Gas: often invisible, spreads to fill whole container
Assessment:
Students complete the Exit Ticket Worksheet.
GATE extension: Is a solid the same things as a liquid? Why or why not? Use evidence from our experiment to support your opinion.
Wrap-up / Closure:
Students attempt to devise a rule to tell if something is solid, liquid, or gas. Do a quick pair share before calling on students to share out with whole class.
