NSTA Article Review:

What’s the Matter With Teaching Children About Matter?

The NSTA article I chose to review is called “What’s the Matter with Teaching Children
About Matter?”. This article focuses on how students’ prior knowledge and understanding of
scientific concepts like matter (solids, liquids, and gases) should guide teachers’ instructional
planning. The article presents strategies that can help teachers identify students’ ideas about
matter and utilize those ideas to plan instruction that will build deeper scientific understanding.
This article did not so much give me a better understanding of the content itself as it did
a better understanding of how to present the content to my students so they are able to
construct stronger scientific knowledge. The article also gave me ideas about more effective
ways that I can introduce the concept of matter to my second graders. I like that this article
went beyond common strategies like the KWL chart as a preassessment for students. Instead,
they used a preassessment activity where they presented students with six cups containing six
different substances. For this activity, students had to observe what was in each cup, record
their observations, and determine which substances could be classified as solid, liquid, or gas,
along with their own definitions of each term. Students also had to respond to open-ended
prompts to elaborate on their written observations. I think this is a powerful preassessment
because it provides the teacher with better insight into what students already know and what
misconceptions they may have. This is an activity I would definitely use in my classroom.
By using this activity as a preassessment, they were able to create learning experiences
that clarified and elaborated on the definitions of solids, liquids, and gases that students
already had. I noticed that they waited to introduce students to formal definitions of key terms.
A mistake that I have often made, especially regarding science instruction, is that after
introducing the content with an activating strategy or preassessment, I jump right into teaching
content definitions because I thought students needed to know what key terms meant before
they could develop content knowledge. I found it interesting that, before students were
introduced to formal definitions, they were first presented with an easily recognizable example
of a solid, a liquid, and a gas. Students were able to explore each object and try to classify them
as solid, liquid, or gas before being given the correct classification.
I also found it interesting that, in the article, they made it a point not to tell students
that their initial ideas about matter were incorrect. Instead, they were intentional when
selecting examples of solids, liquids, and gases to ensure those selections challenged students'
initial definitions. This is a strategy I have never really used in my classroom but will be sure to
implement in the upcoming school year. I think an interesting way to expand on the approach
mentioned in this article would be to take students outside or on a virtual field trip and allow
them to find examples of solids, liquids, and gases using their new understanding of the formal
definitions of the terms.