Description
What our Elements: Potassium lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Elements: Potassium 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 one of the most common 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: POTASSIUM LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Discovery and Practical Applications
The Elements: Potassium lesson plan contains two content pages. In 1807, scientist Sir Humphry Davy discovered potassium while experimenting with potash, a material made from plant ashes. During a process called electrolysis, which involves running electricity through a substance to break it apart, Davy found a new shiny metal inside the potash. He named it potassium, after potash, of course! This was the first time a metal was separated using electricity. Scientists quickly realized that potassium was both interesting and very important for living things and the world around us.
Potassium has many uses in daily life. One of the most common is in fertilizers that farmers and gardeners use to help plants grow strong and healthy. Farmers depend on potassium to ensure crops like corn, wheat, and potatoes grow well. Potassium is also in certain medicines to help people with heart problems. Some types of glass and soap are made with potassium, too. In fireworks, potassium compounds help create bright colors when they explode in the sky. Even though we don’t always see potassium, it works behind the scenes in many things we use.
Potassium Facts and Why the Element Matters
This element is all around us. You can find it in soil, rocks, and even the ocean. Plants take in potassium from the soil to help them grow. When we eat foods like bananas and spinach, we get potassium, too. Our bodies need it to keep our hearts beating and our muscles moving. In technology, potassium is used in batteries and even in some explosives. It is also found in salt substitutes for people who need to eat less sodium. Potassium plays a big role in keeping things working in nature or in science.
Did you know that pure potassium is so soft that you could cut it with a butter knife? It’s also highly reactive—it can catch fire just by being exposed to water! Potassium is even slightly radioactive but not enough to be dangerous. Some of the world’s largest potassium deposits are deep underground in ancient dried-up oceans. Also, astronauts use potassium-rich foods to help keep their bones strong in space. Potassium is full of surprises!
Potassium is one of the most critical elements on Earth. Without it, plants wouldn’t grow properly, and humans and other animals wouldn’t be able to move their muscles or keep their hearts beating. Scientists and doctors use this important element to save lives. Farmers rely on it to feed the world. Even though we don’t always notice it, potassium is everywhere, making life possible and keeping the world running smoothly.
ELEMENTS: POTASSIUM LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Elements: Potassium 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.
SOIL SAMPLING ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity, students will conduct an experiment that will test the amount of potassium in different soil samples to understand why plants need potassium to grow.
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.
