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

 

Changing Phases – Using a Venn Diagram

Smart Board Activity – Using a Venn Diagram to classify the states of matter and the changing phases.  The purpose of this activity was to visually represent how the states of matter and the phase changes are related to each other.

I pulled up the Venn diagram onto the Smart Board screen with the list of words and phrases listed on the right side.  This Venn diagram has circles/categories for solid, liquid, and gas. I reminded the students that wherever the circles overlap, it is something that both categories had to have in common, or it was a true statement for both. Where all 3 circles overlap, it is something that all 3 categories must have in common.

I divided the class into small groups.  I explained that each group would have a turn at the Smart Board, sending one person at a time as their representative. In their small groups, the students discussed amongst themselves what words or phrases they would like to place into the Venn diagram. They also had to decide who would go first, and so forth. I set this activity up to be a friendly competition to see which group can get the most items placed into the Venn diagram correctly.

Using the tri-fold brochure for their note taking, they took notes in blue or red colored pencil. They used the blue colored pencil for the phrases that were in blue and related to the properties for each state of matter,  red for the words that were in red and referred to each of the phase changes.  They only wrote down the answers if they were placed correctly into the Venn diagram, I didn’t want them working ahead.  This kept their focus on the board. If a student did place a word/phrase into the wrong spot, I moved it back to the list on the right.  The next team could either correctly place the word/phrase into the diagram or choose a new word/phrase.

From start to finish, this activity took about 25 minutes. Overall, the activity went really well and the students were engaged and enjoyed the friendly competition.

For HW, students will review the terminology related to phase changes, as well as read about hot water freezing faster than cold water.

Handouts:

pg. 53 – Phase Change Vocab

pg. 54 – BrainPOP: Phase Changes Activity

pg. 55 – Review: States & Phases Venn Diagram

pg. 56 – Read About it: BrainPOP – hot water freezes faster?