Big Idea 9: Changes in Matter

Students will explore through fiction/nonfiction texts and hands-on activities that materials can be altered to change some of their properties. In an extension lesson, students can also explore how other forms of energy (besides electricity) can be used to cook food.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will conduct a guided inquiry lab involving the chemical change that creates rust. This lab is meant to be set up in one day and then observed over the course of 3 weeks.

Type: Lesson Plan

Through demonstrations and lab/investigate rotations, students will explore physical and chemical changes.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson demonstrates how students can determine the cause and effect relationship in the digestion process. Students will be able to determine where chemical and physical changes occur in the digestion process and support their findings from an informational text. This lesson provides students with an opportunity to apply their knowledge of physical and chemical changes in matter to the process of digestion.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this integrated ELA lesson, students will determine the cause and effect relationship for types of metals that experience rusting and tarnishing. The students can also compare and contrast the chemical changes of rusting and tarnishing, which will help them further understand how matter can change. This integrated lesson will help students apply comprehension skills to better understand informational text.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson demonstrates how students can apply the process of comparing and contrasting to demonstrate the similarities and differences between physical and chemical changes in matter. The students will then compare and contrast these changes, assisting them in understanding the different ways matter changes.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson demonstrates how students can apply the process of identifying main idea and supporting details to show the different ways burning can chemically change matter. The students can identify these changes and discuss the details that support these changes, which will help them further understand how burning matter is considered a chemical change.

Type: Lesson Plan

Identify some familiar changes in materials that result in other materials with different characteristics in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Students are presented with an apple and are asked to draw it. In each subsequent class period they are asked to draw the same apple again. In this way, they watch and record the changes the apple goes through as it decays.

Type: Teaching Idea

This activity will allow students to bury various pieces of trash in a plotted area of land outside. After approximately two to three months, the trash will be uncovered to allow the students to investigate what types of materials biodegrade in soil.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this classroom lab setting, students will construct Decomposition Columns from two-liter plastic bottles. Students will gather organic material and observe activity in the column. Students will record observations and construction steps in their science notebook.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this chemistry lab, students will observe a variety of physical and chemical changes in matter.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this indoor lab activity students will be given a large variety of objects to sort into categories. After practice and discussion, they will then sort food items, first based on their five senses, then by studying their reactions when placed in red cabbage juice. Students document their predictions, observations, the results of their work and their conclusions.

Type: Teaching Idea

In this series of 10 investigations, students gain experience with the evidence of chemical change - production of a gas, change in temperature, color change, and formation of a precipitate. Students begin by observing that similar-looking powders can be differentiated by the way they react chemically with certain test liquids. Students then use their chemical tests and observations to identify an unknown powder and, in a follow-up activity, to identify the active ingredients in baking powder. Students continue to explore chemical change by using a thermometer to observe that temperature either increases or decreases during chemical reactions. Then they control these reactions by adjusting the amount of reactants. In another set of activities, students use the color changes of red cabbage indicator to classify substances as acids or bases, neutralize solutions, and compare the relative acidity of two different solutions. Students conclude the investigation by comparing a precipitate to one of the reactants that formed it. Students see that a new substance was created during the chemical reaction. Information and questions about photosynthesis and cellular respiration are included as examples of chemical changes on pages 316-318 of this resource.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence