Science 8 – We started a new unit on matter and fluids today. First task was to figure out what everyone already knew about the topics. Students worked together on whiteboards and compiled lists of prior knowledge. Common things that my students wrote down included: everything is made up of matter and particles, atoms are the smallest types of particles, atoms are made up of electrons, proton and neutrons, states of matter.
This activity took about 45 minutes because there were lots of questions being asked as we went around the whiteboards. When I do KWL (Know, Want to know, Learned) activities, they’re usually done within 5 minutes. Today’s class was much more rich than that.