Switching gears from the beaches of Miami to Separating Mixtures in Science

Who takes homework to a Miami resort?  I do!  A little rest, relaxation and some science preparation for Monday's class.  What better way to read through a lesson plan and prepare for a class than to enjoy the sun under the beautiful palm trees.  I have to admit I did feel a little frazzled on Monday after returning late from a flight the night before but thankfully I have a very dedicated partner who I knew would have completed her share of our lesson.  We agreed to meet early on Monday to put our heads together and go over the flow of our lesson as well as identifying what our goals were.

We had all of our materials prepared and the technological piece ready to go at the start of class.  I led the class in a brief discussion about what we learned from last week's class question, "do all solids behave the same when mixed with water?" to which the students responded "no".  We also reviewed  the science process skills from last week (operation observer and reliable recorder).  I added a new science question "Can all mixtures be separated using the same method?" along with our new science process character (Purely Predictor) which we hung up front with the other two skills people.  We went over what a prediction is and how we would use this skill to answer a writing prompt in their journals to predict what would happen when we separate each mixture.  The students were asked to draw, write or number their predictions.  I realized that the students did require very detailed instructions here because they still seemed puzzles even after we disseminated the writing prompt to fill in.

We had the students move to the rug and called them by row so they could view a video that Becky had downloaded on her laptop of a solids, liquids and gas song.  They seemed really excited and engaged by this piece of the lesson.  Becky then reviewed the steps for the experiment as I was passing out the mixtures from last week for them to observe and record.  She also addressed safety again and then the students returned to their desks. 

We walked around so that they knew we were available if they had questions and Becky asked if the mixtures had changed, where was the salt, and she touched upon dissolving from last lesson and then I picked up the lesson with asking the class for ideas on our brainstorming chart to cite ways that we could separate our mixtures today.  The students answered with hands, sieve, strainer and a filter.  The filter answer was perfect because it was the new vocabulary word that we were going to add to our word wall this week.  We showed some examples, coffee filter and air filters and put the new word up and quickly went over the different size holes of some real life examples we brought in.

Becky then demonstrated how we would use the filter and the funnel to separate the mixtures.  All students had their materials but this week we put them into groups of 4/5 and this definitely made it a little more confusing.  We then had to make sure they were all taking turns and that everyone could see, and was participating in the experiment.  After this we went over the changes they observed and talked about how the salt was the only solid that did not seem to separate by the filtration method.  Becky then showed her video of herself boiling water and salt and walked the students through the process of using this method to separate the salt mixture.  The students were able to touch the salt in the pot that she brought in.  It was such a clever idea and the students really seemed to grasp the idea of this lesson that the salt and water mixture could be separated by evaporation but not by the same method as the gravel and toilet tissue. Overall, we were able to fit everything in that we wanted but we definitely felt the pressure of time during this lesson.