Teaching Matter with my Firsties

For some reason, this unit has always been one of my favorites.  I have improvised it along the years, but got many ideas from a Master Teacher years ago.  This unit took us the entire month of January, fitting in Science whenever I could. I also use a lot of G.L.A.D. strategies in most of my lessons. {Project GLAD is huge in California and is an instructional model with clear, practical strategies promoting positive, effective interactions among students and between teachers and students. Project GLAD develops metacognitive use of high level, academic language and literacy}.

Before beginning any unit, I create a cover {with the standard listed} for their folder, to keep all worksheets and activities in.  Just grab a piece of construction paper, fold, and glue on the cover.

 My most favorite way to begin this unit is with your basic KWL.  We start with the K: What do you know about matter.  This lets you check their schema.  Then we move to W: What do you wonder or want to know about matter?

My favorite is what they know about matter.  It never has anything to do with scientific matter.  Some of my favorite responses:

"What's the matter with it?"

"Everyone matters."

Next to each student response, I'll always record the student's name or # so that they can take ownership. 

At the end of the unit, we come back together and record L: What did you learn about matter.  We're really working hard on citing our evidence so we wrote down the page numbers where we found the answers.

After we fill out the first two parts of the KWL, we work on the Observations charts, another GLAD strategy that activates prior knowledge.  I printed out different matter photos {see above} and stapled them onto construction paper.  Since I only have 6 firsties, they did this activity independently.  If I was doing it with my entire class, I'd have students work with a partner.  I spread the posters around the room and students wrote down their observations, predictions, and questions.  Like always, they wrote their number next to their sentence.  I have each student/pair use a different color marker.  After about 10 minutes, we came back together and went over their sentences.

 I introduced solids first.  We read from our science book.  The science text isn't always my favorite because it's not very engaging, in my opinion.  But with CCSS, students need to be exposed to non-fiction text and I want them to grasp how a science book is designed {headings, captions, glossary, highlighted words, etc.}  Then, students created a tree map and found photos of solids in my Real Simple magazines and glued them on.  On the following day, we did the same thing for liquids and gases.  

Once we were experts, I created a GLAD pictorial.  Students labeled the rocks as a solid, the water as a liquid, and the bubbles from the fish as a gas.  While students copied and labeled their own pictorial on the cover of their matter journal, I called on quiet students to come up and color the pictorial.  This is always a class favorite!

We sang another GLAD poem that I created.  This is great for fluency and is filled with a lot of information.  You can have students highlight science vocabulary, sight words, and even your sound/spelling for the week.  We sing it a few times and then the kiddos draw a sketch in the box.  We sing this song, along with others, throughout the entire unit.

We watched several Discovery Education videos on matter. If you don't have a Discover Ed. account, beg your Principal to purchase a license.  There are the best education videos aligned to all standards!

Next up is my all-time favorite experiment because it's fun for the kids, it's easy to do, and it shows how matter changes.  We take a latex glove and predict what will happen when we pour water into it.  So glad my kids said that the water will take the place of the glove!

Then students wrote their prediction down.

We all had a chance to pass out the glove and use adjectives to describe it.

Then I asked them what would happen if we put the glove into the freezer.  This is when things were getting exciting, the couldn't wait to see what would happen.  We made predictions, shared our excitement, and giggled...a lot!

Like good scientists, we observed the glove throughout the day to notice any changes. The next day, the glove was frozen.  They shouted "it turned into a solid!"  Melted my little heart when the light bulbs go off! We recorded our observations and were onto the next step.

The last few years, I've always brought in a hot-plate and pot.  But this year I used my mini crock pot and it definitely did the trick.  We unwrapped the glove, felt it, and popped it in the crock pot.  My littles predicted that the solid would turn into a liquid.  

  

And it did!  They were so excited to observe the changes throughout the day.  Make sure your go over the rules about the warm crock pot.

By the end of the day, our "rock on" icy glove had melted into a liquid.  It also evaporated and turned into gas.  I'm telling you, it's super basic but my kids loved it!  They were so excited and my second graders kept peeking over at our lesson because they were curious as to why the first graders were ecstatic.  

If you've made it through this long post, I've got a freebie for you.  Pick up the matter journal {includes cover, poem, and experiment by clicking on the photos below!