Teaching the types of chemical reactions or just chemical reactions in general is actually a topic that I’ve seen WOW students over and over again. It’s just one of the cooler things in science. I mean, seriously, when the common person (not the science nerd like me) thinks of science, it’s pretty much something exploding!
I even think about with my young kids at home, currently 3 and 5. They are SO amazed when we mix baking soda and vinegar together and watch it bubble. It’s amazing to see the wonder in their eyes!
Although chemistry and chemical reactions are pretty cool on their own, students tend to look out into space when you start talking a lot of science jargon and dive into important vocabulary; however, it’s possible to keep them intrigued throughout your whole types of chemical reactions lesson plan.
In this post, I will give insight to some WONDER strategies to get your students hyped up about learning more about chemical reactions. Then, I will share a lesson with you that your students will love to go through to learn more about the types of chemical reactions. Finally, I will share some unique WIDEN strategies for students to gain more knowledge in the area.
Intro Using Examples for Types of Chemical Reactions
As I mentioned, this is an exciting topic, but I do think that you can intrigue your students more if you start off with a WONDER activity. Students will be way more intrinsically motivated to learn more about the types of chemical reactions if you give them some spark. Here are two ideas that you can choose from to introduce your students to this fun topic!
Chemical Reaction Demonstration
One of the best ways to introduce chemical reactions and the different types is to actually do a demonstration. What are examples of chemical reactions? You can go as simple or as complex as you’d like. Here are some examples.
You can also choose to do more than just one!
- Mix baking soda and vinegar and observe.
- Burn a piece of wood (carefully) – or show a video.
- Look at rusted nails.
- Watch an apple brown.
- Create a Coke and Mentos reaction.
- Cook pancakes – lots of reactions happening here…and you know I love food!
There are a lot of more complicated ones that you can dive into. There are chemical reactions all around!
Which type of chemical reaction will you choose to do?
Guided Inquiry Research
The guided inquiry approach to introducing a topic is unique. This is the type of inquiry where the teacher chooses the questions or the topic, then students come up with their own way of answering the question and addressing the topic.
In this strategy, you can ask the students to choose one of the types of chemical reactions and be able to share about this reaction to the class in any way that they choose. You can assign them a type, or they can draw out of a hat randomly. It’s up to you and what best fits your class.
Once they have the type of chemical reaction they need to research, they can choose how they want to approach it. Do they want to build a model of a reaction or demonstrate it (safely)? Do they want to create a brochure to share with the class? What about creating a Google Slides presentation? Do they want to bring in some type of food that represents the reaction? The possibilities are endless! This allows for students to dive into the content early based on their passions. You will eventually share with them everything that they need to know.
In this way, they will eventually learn beyond what is required. As a class, they will learn how to identify types of chemical reactions.
Types of Chemical Reactions Lesson
In this interactive lesson, students are taken through the content piece-by-piece with fun embedded activities to give students a chance to process the information.
Interactive lessons can be used for whole class instruction, individual learning, distance-learning, or even review! They are created using researched-based strategies to help students retain content and store it in their long-term memory.
In this particular chemical reactions lesson, students will learn about chemical reactions and examples, endothermic and exothermic reactions, chemical equations, reaction rates, the 5 types of chemical reactions definitions, signs of a chemical reaction, and more! This is a types of chemical reactions ppt with so much more to offer.
There are embedded activities throughout the content that help students to process the information as they go. These include: a four corners vocabulary activity, drag-and-drop, exploring outside resources, KWL, and more. Students and teachers love these interactive lessons. It gives them the types of chemical reactions practice that they need.
Skip the types of chemical reactions worksheet and try this!
You can find this in my shop or on TPT.
Types of Chemical Reactions WIDEN Activities
At this point, your students have already learned a lot about chemical reactions, beyond what they need to know in middle school. Guess what? If time allows, they can learn even more. This will help prepare them for that high school chemistry class!
Here are two ideas of activities that your students can do to learn even more!
Daily Life Chemical Reaction Project
Want to have your students learn the types of chemical reactions with examples from everyday life? This is how your students can learn 5 types of chemical reactions with examples.
In this activity, similar to the research project mentioned above, students can choose a reaction type, or you can choose one for them.
From there, students should conduct research on how this type of chemical reaction is used in everyday life.
They can present in any form to the class!
You can have students work independently on this project or in groups.
Beyond the Elements: Reactions
Another thing that you can do to widen student knowledge on chemical reactions is to show this longish video about how chemical reactions transform the world. There are a lot of cool examples.
One thing that I love to do when students watch videos (to make sure they are paying attention) is to have them to label a paper A-Z. As they are watching the video, they should listen out for vocabulary words that start with each letter. See who can get the most!
After the video, you can have a good discussion with your class.
You can also opt to do a types of chemical reactions lab. There are a lot of neat ideas online!
Help your students master science content!
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