Separation of mixtures is a tough activity for teachers to set up for students to learn. Honestly, it’s a lot of vocabulary. Which truthfully are my least favorite lessons to teach. Vocabulary lessons are necessary though. Students need to know the content language in order to work properly with the content. It’s that simple. Here’s what I do to get my students to practice separation of mixtures.
Still Teach the Vocabulary Lesson
I know it’s kind of boring. I try to pair these separation of mixture techniques with demos when I can, but that’s not always practical. As I teach this lesson, I have the students fill in guided notes. I like guided notes for this lesson because I feel like it’s a good way to make sure students listen. And listen a lot.
My guided notes page includes diagrams. I know there are teachers out there that feel that drawing the diagram can help students to remember the concepts better. I am not one of those people. Despite the fact that I auditioned for, and got into honors art in 8th grade, I am not a good artist. I’m pretty sure the class was going to be canceled if too few students signed up… Anyway – I know the struggle of looking back on busted drawings and trying to figure out exactly what I’m looking at. For this reason, I just provide diagrams for my students in their notes.
While I’m teaching the vocabulary terms for the separation of mixture techniques, the students are not drawing and not writing much. They are pretty focused on me and what I’m saying. And that’s good.
I use Turn and Teach
Even though I didn’t love all of the strategies in Whole Brain Teaching, I did like this one. In turn and teach students pair up. They take turns being the teacher and the student. The “teacher” is supposed to teach exactly what you just taught them. This gives the students an opportunity to speak what they just learned. It helps them to find issues with their understanding of the content. The “student” gets to hear the content again in a new way. These two students will take turns after every chunk of your teaching to reteach or relearn the concepts.
This helps to keep the vocabulary lesson from getting really stale and repetitive. If you use this strategy often in your teaching, students will know that they need to be paying attention to what is going on to the level that they will be expected to teach it. I especially love this activity to practice separation of mixtures since it’s a vocabulary heavy lesson.
Chemistry Quest
After the students seem to have a good understanding of separation of mixtures, I have them complete what I call a Chemistry Quest. Some others may call this a Question Trail. In the separation of mixtures chemistry quest, there are multiple folded cards around the classroom. The outside of the cards have answers and the insides have questions. Students start with a particular card, which gives them a quest. For the separation of mixtures activity, the kids need to “slay a dragon.” They flip open that card and are given a question. When they think they know the answer to that question they will search the room for that answer. When they find it, they lift the card to receive the next question.
The point is that at the end of the class, the students will have collected all of the answers. BUT their answer document must have the answers in the correct order. There is ONLY one path for them to take though the trail of questions. I set up the answer sheet to have JUST the right number of blocks so I let them know if they finish “early” they’ve done something wrong. After all my different lessons, this is my favorite to practice separation of mixtures.
If they finish “early” they have to go through the quest backwards until they find their mistake and then start from that point. That’s where the fun (as a teacher) really comes in. I will jump in and help some kids that are REALLY struggling, but oftentimes I have the kids move around in groups. A few heads are better than one!
Absent Kids or IEPs
For the absent kids, I give them all the same prompts and answers but on one page. For them it turns into a matching worksheet. Certainly not the same level of fun, movement and teamwork, but the absent student will use the same brainpower. In my book, the important thing is the exposure to the questions and answers more than anything else.
All students with IEPs have different needs, of course. The matching worksheet can be a good alternative to the students who for any number of reasons can’t walk around the room searching for answers.
Translated
Since this is such a vocabulary heavy lesson, and I’ve had students who needed it, I had this resource translated into Spanish. If you purchase this activity, you will receive both the English and the Spanish versions of this activity.
