States of Matter Graphing and Particle Diagrams (KS3, middle school)

When I teach States of Matter one thing I always struggle to get across is the relationship between energy, temperature and change of state. I’ve designed this resource to try and help with that! It can be used in conjunction with any other teaching methods you use in the classroom and asks students to push themselves a little bit in their conceptual understanding!

This download contains 4 documents which you can mix and match as it makes sense for your class. A quick summary of each is below (and there are screenshots in the preview):

• Resource 1 outlines an experiment for boiling water, questions about the procedure and space for drawing particle models.
• Resource 2 includes a results table and instructions on how to plot the graph (a heating curve of water)
• Resource 3 is a blank graph for plotting (you can also use graph paper- totally up to you)
• Resource 4 is further questioning to understand the graph/ heating curve.
  Resources 1, 3 and 4 all have suggested answers, resource 2 doesn’t have any questions so there is no answer sheet for this one.

The folder has the worksheets as pdf individually and combined.

This activity is based on one I’ve done with students that actually works really well in the classroom or at home as a practical. However, this resource contains a condensed version of the method so I wouldn’t personally use just this if I was to do the experiment with students. Instead, I use this resource to check for application and understanding. It works well as classwork or homework.

I’ve used this with Grade 6 as supported group work but also with higher grades as completely independent work, you know your classes best!