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Assuming we have been covering the topic of space, including aliens and other sub topics.
Also basing this lesson on my Special education setting.
Assuming we ended our last lesson by placing our alien figurine characters into trays suitable for freezing, and after having added water to the trays, questioning the children about what will happen, what it will look like if we place them in the freezer over night. Record all responses.
Learning outcome: Explore the effects of heating and cooling on water.
Introduction: gather the children in a circle, dramatically explain that our aliens have been captured and it is up to us to free them. Reveal our frozen aliens. Together we will sing a song about helping to rescue our aliens. (teacher created)
up up and away, to space we must go
as fast as we can, there’s no going slow,
our aliens have been captured, in cold, hard ice,
we need heat to rescue them
we must be precise
*****
fetch the warm water, and wait ’til you see
the aim is to set our alien friends free.
melting melting the ice slips away,
hip hip hoary we have saved the day.
****
We will act out the lyrics of the song, singing it through three times.
Main activity:
Then teacher will sing it through acting it out by actually melting the ice with warm water (set up earlier) the children will observe this time. Then each child will be set up for rescuing their own alien whilst singing the song.
Take before and after pictures of the kidnapped and rescued alien. Print them off for the children. ask the children to explain what had just happened in their own words. Using key words the children will sort vocabulary under the correct picture comparing and contrasting the experiment.
cold, warm, ice, melted, trapped, free, frozen, heat
Conclusion: Compare the responses the children gave in the previous lesson to what the actual result of placing the trays in the freezer was. Discuss what the children’s experience of seeing things like this happen before was. Did you ever make ice at home? did you ever see ice in Winter time, how did the ice go away in Winter time? etc.
Display comparison posters in the space themed area of the classroom.