Science Changing Materials Interactive Display or Assessment Opportunity

This effective interactive display was used in a Year 4 classroom for assessment to save marking! I used it as a baseline assessment and again at the end of the unit of work and simply took a photograph of each pupil’s effort as evidence and noted down anything they may have said whilst doing the activity.

Unfortunately I don’t have a photograph of this display, but here is a rough description of how I arranged it:

• Headings ‘soluble’ and ‘insoluble’ for pupils to organise substances such as flour, salt, rice & sand underneath.
• Headings ‘Reversible’ and ‘Irreversible’ for pupils to organise descriptions of different changes under, e.g. ‘freezing orange juice to make lollies’.
• Matching the vocabulary to the correct definition (these could also be used as flash cards as another form of assessment), e.g. dissolve, filter, sieving.
• Gas, solid and liquid with their properties and a simple particle diagram.

I also provided the children with post-it notes and they added their own examples of gases, solids and liquids; irreversible and reversible changes; and soluble and insoluble materials to the display as the unit progressed.

I mounted the text on black card and laminated it as I knew they would be handled a lot. I just put blu-tac on the back, but Velcro would be another option. My display is quite plain as I didn’t want to distract pupils when assessing them, but the display is provided in Word format as well as PDF so it can be glammed up with colour if you like.

There are many ways that this display could be used. One activity that I did later on in the year was to bring out the cards and use them as headings on a giant Carroll Diagram (the assessment was for maths data handling but it was good to revise the vocabulary). Pupils placed items under headings ‘soluble’ and ‘insoluble’ and other criteria such as ‘edible’ or ‘inedible’. I also used a Venn diagram for solids and liquids and children placed food items and other items in two qiant PE hoops with an overlap in the middle.

I hope you enjoy using this resource and I hope that it saves you some time!