When you are teaching acids and bases to middle school students, it’s always exciting to see their reaction when you help them to understand the importance of it in their daily lives. When you first ask them about their understanding of the topic, activating their prior knowledge, they may know a few things here and there. Maybe they realize that orange juice is acidic, that water is neutral, and that when you mix vinegar and baking soda, there are bubbles, but, oh there is so much more to it than that.
This is basic chemistry, and these building blocks are important for the more complex subjects that they’ll be introduced to later in life. In middle school, you just focus on the basic information about acids and bases.
There are also so many more applications that they can use right in middle school. They learn about the digestive system and how acids are important for breaking down food. They learn about the basics of chemical reactions, mixing acids and bases. They learn about plants and how they may require different pH soils to survive. They learn about air pollution and how acid rain is a problem in some places. They learn about water purification which relies on a balanced pH. I could go on and on.
There are so many real-life applications to this basic chemistry topic. Guess what else! It’s so much fun to teach!
In this post, I will show you how you can bring the WOW factor to your science classroom teaching this topic. First, I’m going to give you a strategy to get your students excited about learning this topic and help them wonder and want to learn more. Second, I will show you how to really help your students overcome the overwhelm of information using an interactive lesson. Lastly, I will share a fun lab that can be used to help widen your students’ knowledge on the topic!
What activities will you choose for teaching acids and bases?
An Intro on How to Understand Acids and Bases
As in all of my WOW factor lessons, the first thing that you should do as a teacher is to hook your students in. If you don’t have buy-in, their thoughts will be in the clouds. The ultimate goal is to get students to love learning and become internally motivated to learn the topic.
So, what is the way to a middle schooler’s heart? Well, there are a lot of things, but in all of my years of teaching, I know one of those ways is food!
Before you teach about acids and bases, have a FOOD TASTING!
Students can have a “sampling” of different foods and see if they notice and similarities or differences when they try these items.
What food/drinks do you need?
- orange juice (acidic)
- carbonated beverage (acidic)
- grapes (acidic)
- tortillas (basic, more alkaline)
- water (neutral)
- crackers (more alkaline)
Once you have your supplies, you need to create samples for all of your students. You can get little cups like these and begin! You can get a student helper, but just make sure that they wash their hands and can even wear gloves.
Once all of the samples are ready, you can have them passed out to each students. You can pass everything out at once, or just taste one thing at a time!
As students compare the food and drinks, ask them questions:
- What do you notice about the taste of _____________?
- How are these items different?
- How are these items similar?
Since this is a WONDER strategy, give your students a chance to ask some questions as well! See what they are interested about. Then, they are ready to dive into the content.
*You can choose to have all of these items, or just a few. You can also switch out. Just make sure to have a neutral pH, an acidic pH, and a more alkaline pH. A lot of foods are acidic, but you can find some that are more alkaline than others.
*Be mindful of student allergies when attempting this exciting wonder strategy.
Acid and Bases Notes – Middle School
Teaching acids versus bases to middle school students can be challenging, but there are ways of helping your students to overcome the overwhelm, and one of my favorite ways to do this is by using an interactive lesson. This is a great lesson for teaching acids and bases.
Interactive lessons are specifically designed to break down science content into chunks followed by embedded questions and activities to give students a chance to process the information before moving on. By doing this, students are not given a ton of information at a time. This reduces student cognitive load, ultimately helping students commit information to their long-term memory.
In this Acids and Bases Interactive Lesson, students will learn about acids, bases, their properties, examples, uses, H+ and OH- ions, the pH scale, can acids and bases be mixed together, common salts, indicators, bases used in everyday life, acids used in everyday life, and more!
There are so many embedded activities to help students understand the content including a KWL, writing activities, exploring outside resources, drag-and-drop activities, and more!
You students will truly love it and will learn so much!
This is also available on TPT.
Teaching Acids and Bases with WIDEN Strategies
One of the fun labs that you can do with your middle school students is the pH lab using red cabbage. It sure isn’t the best smelling lab; however, it is very effective at teaching how such common items can be used to measure pH and learning how to name bases and acids. You can even do this lab at home.
There are so many items that you can use to test. For the purpose of this being easier on you, I’m going to link some videos so that you can see what best fits your classroom. Enjoy, and let me know how it goes!
- Red Cabbage pH Indicator Video #1
- Red Cabbage pH Indicator Video #2
- Red Cabbage pH Indicator Video #3
What are your favorite ways for teaching acids and bases?
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