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OpenSciEd Unit 7.1: Chemical Reactions (A) Teacher Edition
Author(s): NATIONAL CENTER FOR
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2020
Pages: 338
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OpenSciEd Middle School science program addresses all middle school NGSS standards. This comprehensive science curriculum empowers students to question, design, investigate, and solve the world around them.
- Phenomenon Based - Centered around exploring phenomena or solving problems
- Driven by Student Questions - Storyline based on students’ questions and ideas
- Grounded in Evidence - Incremental building and revision of ideas based on evidence
- Collaborative - class and teacher figure out ideas together
- Equitable - Builds a classroom culture that values ideas and learning of all
The OpenSciEd model uses a storyline approach, introducing phenomena that anchors storylines developing disciplinary core ideas, concepts, and science/engineering practices. Students are encouraged to dive deep into key points and solve problems through five activities. Students kick off a unit of study, investigate questions, piece together the puzzle in investigations, and problematize the next set of questions to investigate.
Unit 7.1: How can we make something new that was not there before?
To pique 7th grade students’ curiosity and anchor the learning for the unit in the visible and concrete, students start with an experience of observing and analyzing a bath bomb as it fizzes and eventually disappears in the water. Their observations and questions about what is going on drive learning that digs into a series of related phenomena as students iterate and improve their models depicting what happens during chemical reactions for middle school science. By the end of the unit, students have a firm grasp on how to model simple molecules, know what to look for to determine if chemical reactions have occurred, and apply their knowledge to chemical reactions to show how mass is conserved when atoms are rearranged.
Embedded in this 7th grade chemistry unit are a variety of assessments, including self, peer, formative, and summative assessment tasks. This unit concludes with a transfer task in which students apply what they have figured out to two different related phenomena, elephant’s toothpaste and the crumbling of the marble that makes up the Taj Mahal.
Lesson 1: What happens when a bath bomb is added to water (and what causes it to happen)? Lesson 2: Where is the gas coming from?
Lesson 3: What’s in a bath bomb that is producing the gas?
Lesson 4: Which combinations of the substances in a bath bomb produce a gas?
Lesson 5: What gas(es) could be coming from the bath bomb?
Lesson 6: How can we explain another phenomenon where gas bubbles appear from combining different substances together?
Lesson 7: How can we revise our model to represent the differences in the matter that goes into and comes out of the bath bomb system?
Lesson 8: How can particles of a new substance be formed out of the particles of an old substance?
Lesson 9: Does heating liquid water produce a new substance in the gas bubbles that appear?
Lesson 10: When energy from a battery was added to water, were the gases produced made of the same particles as were produced from heating the water?
Lesson 11: How do Dalton’s models of the particles that change in a reaction compare to the ones we developed?
Lesson 12: How can a new substance (a gas) be produced and the total mass of the closed system not change?
Lesson 13: Why do different substances have different odors and how do we detect them?
Lesson 14: What is happening to the Taj Mahal?
NATIONAL CENTER FOR
OpenSciEd® was launched to improve the supply of and address the demand for high-quality, open-source, full course science instructional materials. The goals of OpenSciEd are to ensure any science teacher, anywhere, can access and download freely available, high quality, locally adaptable materials. Though the goal of providing full course materials is still a couple of years away, OpenSciEd is releasing six-week units of instruction as they are completed and externally evaluated as quality by Achieve’s Science Peer Review Panel. OpenSciEd classroom materials are an open education resource and therefore free to download, copy, use, and/or modify. You can download the instructional materials free of charge at Access Materials page on the OpenSciEd website. In an effort to lower barriers for all educators to use OpenSciEd, Kendall Hunt and OpenSciEd have partnered to sell high quality printed books, professional learning and lab kits.