Description
What our Elements: Metalloids lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Elements: Metalloids is a high-interest reading comprehension lesson plan. As such, students will practice various close reading and comprehension skills. In addition, they will learn about this strange group of elements in the Periodic Table of Elements. This lesson is for students in 5th grade and 6th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Teacher Notes
The paragraph on this page provides a little more information or guidance on what to expect from the lesson. It explains that you can teach this lesson in a whole-class setting or as an independent, small-group activity. You can use the blank lines to record any thoughts or ideas you have as you prepare.
ELEMENTS: METALLOIDS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
The Elements: Metalloids lesson plan contains one content page. Long ago, scientists divided elements into two groups: metals and nonmetals. As they discovered more elements, they noticed that some didn’t fit neatly into either group. These elements had a mix of metal and nonmetal features. Over time, scientists realized they needed a new category, so they created metalloids! Antimony was one of the first elements that confused scientists because it looked like a metal but acted like a nonmetal in some ways. It’s a silvery-white, brittle solid with poor electrical and thermal conductivity.
To be a metalloid, an element needs to have properties of both metals and nonmetals. Metals are shiny and good at carrying electricity. Nonmetals are dull and don’t carry electricity well. Metalloids are in between. For example, tellurium is glossy like a metal but brittle, breaking easily, like a nonmetal. Some metalloids can carry electricity only under certain conditions. This makes them useful as semiconductors, which are materials that help control electricity in electronics.
What Are the metalloids?
There are usually seven elements that scientists agree are metalloids, though sometimes one or two more may be included depending on how they behave. The seven main metalloids are boron (B), silicon (Si), arsenic (As), antimony (Sb), tellurium (Te), polonium (Po), and astatine (At). These elements are found along the zigzag line on the Periodic Table between metals and nonmetals. They each have a mix of properties from both groups. Because of these special traits, metalloids are used in critical technologies like computer chips, solar panels, and flame-retardant materials.
Did you know that even though there are only a few metalloids, they are found in many essential inventions? They are also great at making materials stronger or better. For example, adding boron to steel makes it harder. While most metals are good at conducting heat and electricity, metalloids can control those flows, which is helpful in technology. And because they are in the middle of the Periodic Table, they help us understand how all the elements are connected!
Why We Need Them
Metalloids are vital because we need them in many things we use daily. Silicon is one of the most useful metalloids. It is used to make computer chips, solar panels, and glass. Boron is a metalloid you can find in cleaning products and even sports equipment! Arsenic, though poisonous, is sometimes used in minimal amounts in electronics and medicine. Because of their special properties, metalloids help us build things that would be hard to make with just metals or nonmetals alone.
ELEMENTS: METALLOIDS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Elements: Metalloids lesson plan includes two worksheets: an activity worksheet and a review worksheet. Each one will help students solidify their grasp of the material they learned throughout the lesson. You can refer to the classroom procedure guidelines to know when to hand out each worksheet.
METALLOID POSTER ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity, students will become an expert on one of the mysterious metalloids! Their job is to research, create, and present a poster about a metalloid of their choice, showing how it is similar to both a metal and a nonmetal. The worksheet lists questions for the students to answer in their presentation as well as the parts they need to include.
REVIEW WORKSHEET
The review worksheet lists 5 questions based on the content. These questions all relate to the content pages, so students will need to refer to them often for the answers. In addition, each question provides which reading tool the question corresponds to, such as text feature, vocabulary, or comprehension.
Worksheet Answer Keys
At the end of the lesson plan document is an answer key for the practice worksheet. The correct answers are all in red to make it easier for you to compare them with students’ responses. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
