Middle School Science Lessons

🧪 Elements, Compounds, & Mixtures : ⚛ Atoms : 💥 Atomic Bonding & Chemical Reactions : ☢️ Atomic Bomb : 👩🏻‍🔬 pH, Acids, & Bases

🥼Becoming a Scientist

  • a collection of activities to use at the start of the school year posted on my “Properties of Matter” page.

🧪 Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures (back to top)

  1. Teachers Pet -👩🏻‍💻 these are FANTASTIC short animated videos that explain many concepts for middle school level chemistry (YouTube)
  2. Meet the Elements Song (YouTube)
  3. Vocabulary – cut and paste activies and templates in Google Drive (blog entry)
  4. Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures Classification Group Activity (blog entry)
    • Includes a whole class activity where students can guess if a substance is an Element, Compound, or Mixture
  5. E, C, M Reinforcement & Quiz, Quiz, Trade Activity– students will learn to identify E, C,Ms using molecular models (blog entry)
  6. Lego Activity: Using Legos to represent Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures (Blog Entry)
  7. Rainbow Lab: Students will make the colors of the rainbow and their own designer colors using food coloring. Fantastic lesson for making mixtures and practicing using a graduated cylinder for liquid volume (blog entry)
  8. Chromatography Lab (pdf) – students will separate the dyes found in markers
  9. Properties of Matter Study Guide (Google slides)
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⚛ Atoms (back to top)

  1. Mystery Sock (blog entry) – student will practice using indirect evidence
  2. Atomic Theory Timeline: How do we make a model of something we can’t see? (blog entry)
  3. “Atoms Family” – practice finding Protons, Neutrons, Electrons, Atomic Number, and Atomic Mass and singing about it 🎶 (blog entry)
  4. Adopt An Element – 🎨 create an advertisement for your favorite element (blog entry)
  5. Periodic Table Reference Handout (pdf) this is my favorite periodic table to use with my students
  6. Periodic Videos 📽 or the Ted-Ed Version
    • LOVE this website, they have videos for each element and the kids really enjoy them
  7. Coloring the Periodic Table – students will learn how the periodic table is set up (blog entry)
  8. Periodic Table Battleship – a fun way to learn where the elements are located (blog entry)
  9. Elements Bingo – play a fun game of Bingo to practice finding elements (blog entry)
  10. Valence Electrons – How to determine the number of valence electrons and shells using the element’s group number and period (blog entry)
  11. Bohr Diagrams: How to draw Bohr diagrams for elements 1-20 (blog entry)
  12. Lewis Structures: How to draw Lewis Structures for elements in Groups 1-8 (blog entry)
  13. Reviewing the patterns of the Periodic Table – can be used as a whole class or self paced review (Google Slides view only)
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💥 Atomic Bonding & Chemical Reactions (back to top)

  1. Reading Formulas and Counting Atoms – students will practice reading formulas and counting atoms (blog entry)
  2. Ionic & Covalent Bonding – Students will learn how atoms form Ionic & Covalent bonds (blog entry)
  3. Bond with a classmate activity – an active way to practice bonding and naming binary compounds (blog entry)
  4. Making Molecular Models Activity – students will practice how to read formulas, practice Ionic and Covalent bonding, create models to show atomic structure, and have a better understanding of basic chemistry (blog entry)
  5. Balancing Chemical Equations Activity – one of my long time favorite activities. Students will learn how to read formulas, count atoms, create and read chemical equations, and balance chemical equations using a hands on activity with color coded formulas. (blog entry)
  6. Identifying and Balancing Chemical Reactions – students will learn to identify the four types of chemical reactions (Synthesis, Decomposition, Single Replacement, & Double Replacement) and balance the equations. (blog entry)
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☢️ Atomic Bomb (back to top)

  1. Einstein’s letter to President Franklin Roosevelt – from the FDR library
  2. FDR’s letter to Einstein – from the Atomic Archive
  3. Duck and Cover – 1950’s safety video for students on what to do in case of nuclear attack
  4. Fake Towns – “Doom Towns” set up for nuclear testing
  5. Every nuclear detonation – this is a fascinating graphical representation of nuclear detonations that I showed to my students as part of our history of the Atomic Bomb Unit
  6. “Fat Man and Little Boy” – Clips from the classic 1989 movie about the race to the atomic bomb.
  7. How the Atomic Bomb Impacted American Culture – part of the Cold War documentary series
  8. Crash Course – The Atomic Bomb
  9. Modern Marvels – The Manhattan Project

👩🏻‍🔬 pH, Acids, and Bases (back to top)

  1. Acids & Bases Venn Diagram: What are the properties of Acids & Bases? (Blog entry)
  2. Cabbage Juice Lab – students will use Cabbage Juice as a pH indicator to test the pH of various household items. (blog entry)
  3. “Alien Juice Bar” -🧑🏻‍💻 a great interactive site where students have to serve juices to aliens, if they give them the wrong juice, the aliens get sick, or worse! (blog entry)
  4. Mystery Powder Labs – student will complete a series of tests (pH, heat, vinegar, iodine) to identify different mystery powders – worksheet (pdf) and flow chart (pdf).

🧪 Elements, Compounds, & Mixtures : ⚛ Atoms : 💥 Atomic Bonding & Chemical Reactions : ☢️ Atomic Bomb : 👩🏻‍🔬 pH, Acids, & Bases

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————–Links on this page were checked and updated on 4.5.25———-