What's the Matter?

Students in second grade had a great time working on finding out about structures and properties of matter. We have been learning through the scientific method to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties, testing different materials, making observations, and finding out how matter can be changed! Check out some of the fun we have had!

  Students started out by reading books and watching short clips to introduce them to matter. They then went on a scavenger hunt around the classroom and hallways looking for different types of matter. 

We then had to work with our shoulder partners to discover the many different properties of matter. They talked about the color, shape, and how it felt. After students had time to explore we created a class anchor chart listing the many different ways we can observe the properties of matter. 

                          

Students worked with partners to compare and contrast two different objects. They used the language we developed to observe and record their findings on a venn diagram. Then they had to compare their results with another set of partners.


During one of the lessons, students worked with their teams to determine how strong different materials are. They first had to determine what we could do with the materials given to them. They talked about the materials. We eventually decided we could use the washers given to them to see how many the objects could hold. We planned how to carry out the investigation by everyone using the ruler to make sure their desk was the same distance apart. They then worked to estimate how many washers each object would hold and state why using the properties they observed. Students played around and analyzed data to see different ways they could place the washers or arrange the materials to make them stronger. At the end we determined that a good definition for strength was hard, solid and not flexible.

        

Through investing we also found that we could change matter from one state to another. We made butter from cream. We had fun opening the container and watching the cream transform. We also had one group use regular milk. They compared the results and found that the same process did not have the same effect.The 2% milk didn't make butter the same way!  We also found out if we mix warm (not cold) milk with vinegar it will turn hard like plastic and that mixing vinegar and baking soda will create a gas to blow up a balloon.

                                 


                     

                                         

During our learning, students have been using seesaw to capture their learning and show their parents what they have learned along the way!