Acids & Bases Venn Diagram, Notes

Group SmartBoard Activity (25 minutes): For this activity, I broke it up into 5 parts.

Part 1: General Discussion about acids and bases, pH, and indicators.  Most 5th graders didn’t really have a lot of prior knowledge on this topic.

Part 2: Explained how they were going to watch a BrainPOP movie on acids and bases, and to listen for facts presented in the movie.  Using the list of facts on their handout, they were to write an “A” next to the facts that related to acids, and a “B” next to facts that related to Bases.

Part 3: Gave the students about 3-4 minutes to compare their fact lists with their lab partners. They may not have all the facts categorized, and that was ok.

Part 4: I explained how one person from each group was going to come up to the board and drag one fact into the Venn Diagram.  If they were correct, everyone wrote that fact into the Venn diagram on their handout.  Students had to choose who would go up for each turn, and what fact they would place. It was a good opportunity for collaboration and coming to a consensus. If the answer was incorrect, they had to drag the fact back to the bottom of the board.

Part 5: Go over all the answers, make sure that their notes reflected the  notes that were on the board.

The activity worked really well, the students were on task and it was a nice way to introduce new information in an interactive way.

I uploaded the notebook file to SMART Exchange, not sure if its fully functioning yet, here is the link.

Notebook/Links:

BrainPOP Movie – Acids and Bases

pg. 112 – Acids/Bases Venn Diagram

pg. 113 – BrainPOP – FYI – Gastric Acid

 

States of Matter

Today we talked about the phases of matter and I broke the lesson up into 4 different activities using a variety of strategies.

Part 1 – Brief introduction to set the stage

I told the students to place their hands on the table and close their eyes.  I then asked them “Is the table moving?” Variety of answers.  I told them that the table is made up of billions of atoms that are vibrating, we just can’t feel it.  Atoms do not stay still, I mentioned absolute zero and how scientists think that atoms would stop moving at this extremely cold temperature. Last I checked, we got really close but have not reached absolute zero yet.  

Keeping their eyes closed, I ask them if they feel the air molecules hitting them right now.  Gasses move very quickly and are bouncing around the room, hitting each other, bumping into the wall, off the ceiling, off the floor, kind of like a pinball machine.  I also ask them to take a deep breath – the air is filling up their lungs.  I also mention that they are breathing the same air that the ancient Greeks and Australopithecus did (they just studied early man in History class).  All the matter on Earth has always been here and is constantly recycled.  The oxygen you are breathing right now was once part of a water molecule, or part of an animal, etc… They think its cool and gross at the same time, of course!

Part 2: BrainPOP movie on States of Matter.

I show the movie and paused it when it zoomed into the glass of water and showed the water molecules.  I ask the kids, “What do you notice about how the atoms are arranged?” We discuss it and I have them draw the atoms, in a color of their choice,  into their notes in the liquids box. Continue the movie.

Paused the movie again when it zoomed into the gas atoms up close.  ”What do you notice about how these are arranged compared to the liquid?”  Using a different color, they draw the gas atoms into the gas box.  Continue the movie.

Paused again when it zoomed into the solid atoms up close. “What do you notice about how these are arranged compared to the liquid and gas?” They came up with great observations, such as many more atoms, close together, not a lot of empty space between each, and they were neater – arranged almost in a pattern. Using a third color, we drew in the atoms for the solid.  Played the rest of the movie.

Part 3 – Notes – Jigsaw/read aloud

I assigned a paragraph to each group and gave them about 3 minutes to complete their assigned section.  Once they were done, each person in group 1 read a sentence out loud to the rest of the class. Student 1 read the 1st sentence, student 2, the next, and the group continued until the whole paragraph was done.  I used 3-4 students per group for this activity.

The other groups/students listened and filled in their notes.  We then moved to group 2 for the second paragraph, and so forth.  This worked really well.  Some of the kids noticed that it was exactly the same as the movie, which it was, I made a transcript and cut out important words and placed them in the word bank.

Part 4 – Closure using the matrix

Using the BrainPOP graphic organizer, we reviewed the main concepts that we learned today, making sure to fill it in completely and correctly.

Homework: cut ‘n paste vocabulary to review terms we discussed today.

Resources:

BrainPOP Movie: States of Matter

pg. 50 – BrainPOP: States of Matter Notes

pg. 51 – BrainPOP – States of Matter Graphic Organizer

pg. 52 – States of Matter Vocab