Chemical and Physical Change

Chemical and Physical Change is a unit that is tough for me teach.  It is tough for me because I think it is one of the "simple" concepts, but the students have a hard time grasping it!  Am I alone with this feeling?  (I surely hope not!)  I will say that after my unit was over the kids did great on their PARs assessment!  Here are just a FEW of the things we did in class that I snapped a picture of...

Introduction day, we talked about how particles move inside solids, liquids, and gas.  We did hand movements to show that solids just vibrate in place and don't have a lot of space to move.  Inside a liquid we did a rolling type movement.  This represents that liquids take the space of the container and are a little more free flowing.  For gas are hands are popping all over the place!  

Another experiment we did at the end was just a fun toy that I had found.  It was the melting snowman.  We watched this little guy "melt" throughout the day.  Here are the pictures.  The next day we discussed if we thought this was a chemical of physical change.  What do y'all think?

We watched magic beads aka WATER beads and we observed the changes they under went with water.  We discussed what type of change these under went and even kept them out a couple of weeks to see if they actually returned to their original size or not.

Other experiments: rusting steel wool, vinegar and baking soda, alka setlzer tablet in water, and ripping up paper.

We also memorized this poem...

We also created this foldable.  I adapted because I didn't do the printout.  Instead we just hand wrote the information.  You can read more about here, at Ms Savvy Science!  

What do you do for chemical and physical change?

What's The Matter?

As I was preparing for my student teaching I had to create a learning center. I was preparing for a second grade classroom and was told I would be teaching a unit on MATTER! I was excited to try and attempt my first learning center. My attempt ended up doing pretty well! Check it out below!

On the right corner you will see the necklaces hanging up. Students will wear these when in this center for me to identify if they are out of place. The students will follow the directions on the board, which has them staring on the left and then right. The last step would be the center of the board, students would pull items from the basket and put them in the correct category.


This is the left side of the board. The first step is to match the definitions up with the correct words. Then you would check your answers by looking in the envelope attached at the bottom. **The board is covered in felt and the back of each item has a piece of velcro to allow for easy placement and removing!


This is what the left side looks like when completed.


The right side is next (see the cute necklaces). Students will pull characteristics out and match them with the correct state of matter. Then they would check their answers. This picture actually shows the right side already completed.

In the middle the students will put the correct items in the category and then fill out the handout with all the items listed from the board in their correct place. This would be turned into the teacher to check for understanding.

Here is the entire board completed. Enjoy!