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Balancing Equations Lesson Plan

This document provides a lesson plan for teaching students how to balance chemical equations. It recommends first reviewing the law of conservation of matter with examples. Students should also review finding the least common multiple of numbers. For the lesson, groups of students are given an unbalanced chemical equation and materials to physically represent it. This allows them to discover on their own how to balance the equation so it follows the law of conservation of matter. Once students understand through this activity, they can practice balancing other equations using charts to track elements. The goal is for all students to understand balancing equations before moving to the next topic.

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304 views2 pages

Balancing Equations Lesson Plan

This document provides a lesson plan for teaching students how to balance chemical equations. It recommends first reviewing the law of conservation of matter with examples. Students should also review finding the least common multiple of numbers. For the lesson, groups of students are given an unbalanced chemical equation and materials to physically represent it. This allows them to discover on their own how to balance the equation so it follows the law of conservation of matter. Once students understand through this activity, they can practice balancing other equations using charts to track elements. The goal is for all students to understand balancing equations before moving to the next topic.

Uploaded by

regine13 iki
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Balancing Equations Lesson

Plan
Lesson Plans for Middle School Science / By Keren Perles / Teaching
Middle School: Grades 6-8

Reviewing Concepts
The underlying science concept that students must understand
before learning how to balance equations, is the Law of
Conservation of Matter. Discuss with students several examples of
how matter is neither created nor destroyed, no matter which
chemical processes it undergoes.

More practically, students must be familiar with the concept of a


least common multiple (LCM) before they will be able to
effectively balance equations. Make sure that students can find
the LCM of several simple numbers, such as 3 and 5, or 2 and 6.

Making It Concrete With


Discovery Learning
Instead of teaching students the concept of chemical equations
directly, let them figure it out themselves.

 Divide the class into groups, and give each group a chemical
equation to work with.
 Have them represent the chemical equation by tearing up
colored pieces of paper to make the elements that compose
the equation. For example, they might use blue scraps to
represent oxygen and pink scraps to represent hydrogen.
 After they finish, have each group discuss how their visual
representation seems to contradict the Law of the
Conservation of Matter.
 Then encourage them to figure out how to incorporate
matter conservation into their visual representation, leading
them to understanding the need to balance equations.
 They will need to create additional scraps of material in order
to create a representation that takes matter conservation into
account.

Translating it to Equations
Once students have understood the concept of balancing
chemical equations on their own, they will be more easily able to
balance equations. Give each group of students another equation,
and have the group figure out how to balance it without using the
manipulatives from the previous section. You may want to
suggest that they use charts to keep track of elements.
Instructions on using these charts are included in the linked article
on balancing equations activities.

These balancing equations lesson plans will help you teach this
difficult concept in an engaging way. Make sure that each student
in your groups understand this concept before moving on.

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