PhysicalProperties

FocusQuestions:

1. What are properties of matter?

2. How do we classify items by properties of matter?
5E Lesson Plan
Materials: pasta, aluminum, balloons, coins, pompoms, pipe cleaners, bouncy balls, dried
beans
Objective:
Students will learn different properties of matter and how we use them to classify objects.
Engagement:
We are going to have a ball and pass it around the room to different students. When the ball
is passed to a student, they will provide one characteristic they notice about the ball. For
example, its color, smell, texture, etc).
Explore:
As a class we will create a list of different physical properties (descriptive words)
such as color, smooth, hard, bumpy.
Then, one object will be distributed to each student. All
objects should be different. Each student (a) uses their senses (except taste) to carefully
examine their object and (b) think of five words or phrases that describes their object.
Explain:
Students will show their object to a partner and share their descriptive words or
phrases. Each pair can add any other physical property they can think of to their partners
object. Brief lecture: What sort of descriptive words did we use? Were they based on color,
size, shape, something else?
Extend:
Classifying objects according to physical properties.
Brief Discussion: Why is it important to sort or classify objects? Why do scientists do this?
Students will use the Interactive Whiteboard to classify different objects. On the whiteboard
we will have 6 different objects. Students will come up to the board and classify the 6 objects
into at least 2 different groups and label them. For example, from the 6 objects, students can
sort them into small objects and big objects, soft objects and hard objects, colorful objects
and neutral colors.