Lesson Plan — ILAW · Science 4
Term 1 · Week 3 · Domain: Materials · CG Quarter 1, competency 3
⚠️ The field list is reported, not read. The four section names are consistent across sources; the sub-fields a given division expects may differ. See
source-catalogue.md§8.
This is the whole week. For Day 1 at teaching depth — every question, every anticipated wrong answer, every minute — see
lesson-plan.md.
| Learning Area | Science |
| Grade Level | Grade 4 |
| Term and Week | Term 1, Week 3 |
| CG source | Quarter 1, competency 3 (p. 33) |
| Sessions | 5 × 45 minutes |
| Medium of instruction | English |
| Resources | slides.html · game.html · worksheet.html · worksheet-remediation.html · wall-chart.html · offline-activities.md |
| Format | ILAW — DO No. 009, s. 2026 |
I — INTENTIONS
The competency for this week
CG Quarter 1, competency 3: describe the chemical properties of materials, such as they can be burnt, react with other materials, or are degradable or biodegradable.
Why it sits in Week 3
Weeks 1 and 2 are about science inventions — what science has done for the household. Week 4 is about what heating does to materials: wood, coal, sugar. Weeks 5, 6 and 7 are about minimising harmful changes, local environmental issues, and a survey about them.
Every one of those later weeks assumes the learner can tell a change that makes a new material from a change that does not. Without that, "minimise harmful changes" is a slogan, and the survey in Week 7 collects opinions rather than observations.
This week is also where the quarter's own content standard lands word for word — chemical properties of materials determine their uses — and the roof, the gate and the sachet are all waiting in Week 5 to be explained by it.
Success criteria for the week
By the end of the week, the learner:
- sorts a statement about a material into physical or chemical property and says how they decided
- names at least two pieces of evidence that a new material has been made
- gives a local example of each of the four chemical properties the guide names
- uses the word chemical to say what something is made of, never to mean artificial
These four are the tick boxes on observation-card.html.
II — LEARNING EXPERIENCES
| Day | Focus | What happens | Resources |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Two kinds of property | Two identical nails go into two jars in minute six, with the class's predictions and their names on the board. The two columns are built from the class's own sentences. The juice label is put up and argued about. | lesson-plan.md · slides 1–10 · worksheet.html |
| 2 | Evidence, and the dissolving problem | Sugar in water, salt in water, and chalk dust in water, side by side. Which of the three came back when the water dried on the windowsill overnight? Answer on Day 3. | slides 6, 9 · Activity 1 in offline-activities.md |
| 3 | The four properties, locally | Burn, react, degradable, biodegradable — one example each, found in the school grounds and the canteen, not supplied by the teacher. The buried-samples trial is set up and will be dug up in Week 6. | slides 5, 11 · Activity 4 in offline-activities.md |
| 4 | Making it a fair test | The nails again. What is the same in both jars, and what is different? One difference only. The class rewrites the investigation properly and re-labels the jars. | worksheet.html Section D · Activity 2 |
| 5 | Consolidation and check | The game, all three rounds. The weekly check, seven items. Worksheets returned and ★ discussed. The nails are read and recorded. | game.html · assessment.md §4 |
The shape of each day
| Part | Minutes | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Read the jars | 3 | Two learners, in rotation, report what they see and record it in the log |
| Review | 4 | One statement on the board, sorted by holding up one finger or two |
| Main activity | 25 | The day's focus |
| Into practice | 8 | Worksheet, game, or offline activity |
| Close | 5 | Exit ticket — one statement to sort, with the reason, written and handed in |
The jars are read on all five days. Reading them once on Friday teaches that an investigation is an event; reading them daily teaches that it is a record, and the daily entries are what the performance task in Week 8 is built from.
III — ASSESSMENT
What is looked at, and when
| Instrument | Day | Component it feeds |
|---|---|---|
| Observation card — what the learner actually said | 1–5, continuous | Formative only, no mark |
| Worksheet, Sections A and B | 1 | Written Works |
| Investigation log — five daily entries | 1–5 | Written Works |
| Game record, Round 3 | 5 | Formative only, no mark |
| Weekly check, 7 items | 5 | Written Works |
| Quarter 1 performance task | Week 8 | Performance Tasks |
Weights are 20 / 50 / 30 under DO No. 015, s. 2026 — see
class-record.html, which also carries the year switch for transmutation.
The item that reads
On the weekly check, item 7:
You predicted what would happen to the two nails. What would have to happen for you to decide your prediction was wrong?
Items 1 to 6 can be answered from the wall chart. Item 7 says whether the learner is holding a prediction as a claim about the world — something evidence could overturn — or as a preference. A learner who answers "nothing" has not yet understood what a prediction is for, and that matters more this year than any single fact about rust.
IV — WAYS FORWARD
Remediation
For learners still sorting by guesswork on Day 3.
Use worksheet-remediation.html. It starts from changes the
learner has already watched — rice cooking, a candle burning — and only reaches the two words in
task 3. One new thing per task, with a worked example above each.
For learners who put dissolving in the chemical column on Day 5.
This is the commonest wrong answer in the quarter and it is not carelessness: something genuinely disappeared. Leave a saucer of salt water on the windowsill on Monday and look at it on Friday. The argument is over the moment they see the salt.
Enrichment
For learners who finish Day 2 early.
A third jar: a nail in water that was boiled and then sealed while hot, which holds much less air. Ask them to predict, and then to say what makes the comparison fair — that is Grade 6's fair-test competency arriving two years early, through the back door.
For learners who have the whole idea by Day 3.
Give them the juice carton, a shampoo bottle and a food packet from the canteen. Which claims on those labels are descriptions and which are arguments? This is the reasoning the Week 7 survey needs and almost nobody arrives with.
Teacher reflection
Answer at the end of Friday:
- How many read the jars without being asked by Day 4? That habit is worth more than the content, and it is the thing Week 8's performance task will run on.
- Did anybody change a prediction during the week and say why? Name them on Monday. Changing your mind in public is the hardest thing this subject asks of a ten-year-old.
- Is the word chemical still being used to mean bad? If so, it will resurface in Week 5 and in Week 7. Correct it every time it appears, briefly, without making it a lesson.
Next week
Week 4 is describe changes in properties of materials when exposed to certain changes in temperature, such as changes when wood or coal are burned. It assumes the learner can already say whether a new material was made — because that is the entire question about burning.
If the class does not have it, open Week 4 with the saucer of dried salt water on the desk and the two jars beside it. Three minutes of that is worth more than a re-teach, because it is the same idea arriving as evidence rather than as a definition.
Part of the E-turo MATATAG artifact set. Companion files:
syllabus.md · lesson-plan.md ·
assessment.md · offline-activities.md