Hands on Science Sexto: Activity 10 - Materials Classification

Classification is important for identifying lots of things, especially in biology (animal and plant taxonomies).  By asking yes/no answer questions such as "is it a natural material?" the students divide their group of materials until they isolate individual materials.  This builds organisational skills as well as getting them to think a bit more about the materials that are around us all the time.

This activity is connected to the Matter unit.  In this activity the students will construct a classification system for material using taxonomy.  There is a lot of vocabulary (adjectives) practice here to describe the materials, plus there are opportunities to work of question construction.  I found that about 8 different materials was sufficient to cover an A4 page.    

Link to activity (pdf):  Material Classification Activity