I'm Chris berry I'm a science teacher my area of teaching his physics and marine
studies but I teach junior science as well under the new Australian Curriculum
the school is Samaras College in Wollongong where and all girls catholic
school but we're an independent school run by the Good Samaritan sisters what
we've looked at so far in this topic is Adams we've looked at where they're
structured on the periodic table we looked at how they're structured so
protons and neutrons in the nucleus electrons in the shells around the
outside where we're moving into is what happens when we put these Athens these
elements together okay so we're going to start by having a look at some chemical
reactions I wanted them to see a chemical reaction of their own I wanted
them to perform it themselves with minimal instruction from me once they
can do it themselves they own it in themselves and they will more readily
hold on to that information the signs by doing resources are excellent they're
structured in a bright easy-to-read way so i have it on these students iPads and
they have that on their desk as their instructions if it's in not a practical
experiment they have different activities different resources different
Interactive's that the students can access instead of just searching on
google and hoping they find the correct answer they're still finding the
information but it is a selected set of information something that is tailored
to what they're doing when we do these reactions you're going to write down
observations when you do an observation what do you observe with your eyes yeah
you're looking at something you're looking for something to change what
else do you observe with the smell yeah things might change and see if I change
to know what else what else can you make an observation with what organs can you
make your mouth make an observation to the map you can you can taste it that's
right what else can you yeah your ears so there's an organ there so you can
hear see you can hear there's a change make an observation there later sorry
and touch to see if something changes temperature or might change our texture
now today we're not going to be smelling we're not to be tasting so follow just
test one once you've seen what happens write down your observation
go for it be that which once you dude yeah yeah sunny my go outside cool make
sure you're reading working out how much you need of each the same grade question
why is it going clumpy there's a solid you put in two liquids and suddenly
there's a solid yeah that's what I'd be right now we use a process called
notebooking so while they use a table that's going to be similar for all of
them the way they do it is up to them and they might write extra notes on the
side or might draw a diagram of what they saw and that's totally fine the
idea is is that their books become unique to them and it's not there not
just carbon copies of everybody else's
the more engaging I made my lesson the more practical i made my lesson the more
the students thought about what they were doing themselves the more success i
had anyway so here's something weird what color was that sorry that one there
blue what colors I was that one okay what colors yes clear and what have you
what have you got now blue one yeah yes we've got we had a blue liquid and a
clear liquid and now we've got a blue solid in a what is it kind of a green
color liquid what happened where blue and lumpy you saw a solid appear so the
sign of the chemical change there is you saw a solid here now we don't use the
word solid in our chemistry it has a special word okay let's see if you if
you've learnt this word yet precipitate you've made a precipitate that means the
solid has come out of solution that's a sign of a chemical change if you see a
precipitate you know a chemical changes happen second one you did what did you
see happen under the old system we would introduce a topic and give them some
information and then try and prove it using a practical example it's kind of
been swapped around a bit now so with the inquiry approach you encourage them
to experience it themselves and then from that layer draw a conclusion which
you guide along the way