4: What’s in the clouds?

Ice cream is basically droplets of fat from milk suspended in millions of tiny crystals of ice, fluffed up with tiny pockets of air.
This activity from the Science Museum shows you how to make the right mixture then make it cold enough to create those ice crystals without the aid of a freezer – and reveals how salt and ice make a chilling combination. A great activity for exploring changes of state and the properties of matter.

Learning outcomes:

- Investigate the properties of different states of matter and how they look and behave differently
- Use observation and questioning skills
- Recognise how different states of matter behave have useful applications in our everyday lives

Curriculum Links:

KS2 & 3 Science: States of matter
KS2 &3 Science: Working scientifically

Use this resource from NASA Education to build this mobile of beautiful, feather-weight clouds. Some are rain clouds, dropping sparkling showers below; but it's not just a pretty work of art. The shapes represent certain types of clouds.

An editable comprehension text with a range of different questions, used with a Year 1 class in Autumn term. Extension task has a phonic focus. Please rate and review this resource, any feedback or suggestions for improvement would be most appreciated too! For further comprehension texts please view and review my other resources :)

Save time while engaging students in multi-purpose gallery walk. During this Gallery Walk, students use a dichotomous key to classify clouds and draw conclusions about the weather. Each of the 9 stations has a photo (and two extra credit questions to allow for tiered instruction) Five additional stations cover other weather related topics requiring students to use what they know or read to interpret the pictures.

Answer key and links to online games included in 30 page (.PDF) in a zip file. This is part of the Earth and space science bundle

Eleven writing picture prompts are included for interdisciplinary creative writing. Combining the activities makes collaboration between English and science easy and productive. Included are poetry, metaphor, simile, narrative and sensory writing prompts.

Gallery walks spur active involvement through discussion, collaboration (appealing to interpersonal learners), analysis & synthesis and require students to physically move around the room (engaging kinesthetic learners). Teachers can informally assess based on what they hear and observe or formally assess based on conclusions generated.

Check out leaf & plant adaptations dichotomous key & gallery walk

Can do this lesson for two units - weather or rivers.
All resources included

Designed as a starter to go alongside the teaching of Dowd's 'The London Eye Mystery', but could be used as a starter activity for any lesson. Different images of clouds are used as a prompt for the description of thoughts, feelings, physical features. A good build up to the creative writing tasks in the new GCSE, which require descriptive writing from picture stimulus. Could also be printed off and used as a group/carousel task.