Grade 5 NST Term 2 Week 7: Processing Materials and Combining Materials

Your Week Ahead

This week your Grade 5 class digs into one of the most hands-on topics in the Term 2 programme: how we combine materials to create entirely new ones. The CAPS content covers a lovely range of everyday processes, from mixing plaster of Paris and concrete to cooking dough, making simple flour-and-water glue, cooling jelly, and the longer process of mixing, drying, and firing clay bricks. What ties all of these together is the big idea that when we process materials, we change them in ways that give them new properties and new uses.

In the curriculum sequence, this topic builds directly on learners’ earlier work on the properties of materials. They already know that materials have different characteristics. Now they get to see what happens when you combine or process those materials. That shift from describing materials to understanding how we manipulate them is a key conceptual step in the Intermediate Phase Natural Sciences and Technology programme, and it sets learners up well for work on structures and the built environment later in the year.

Coming into this week, learners should have a working understanding of basic material properties such as hardness, flexibility, and absorbency. They do not need any prior knowledge of chemistry. The processes covered here are all familiar from everyday life, which is exactly what makes this topic so accessible. Most learners have watched concrete being mixed, eaten jelly, or handled clay. Your job this week is to help them look at those familiar things through a scientific lens.

This Week’s Lesson Plan

The three lessons this week move learners from understanding the concept to exploring specific examples and then consolidating their knowledge through comparison and reflection.

Day 1: Introduce the concept of combining and processing materials. Explore mixing and setting processes using plaster of Paris and concrete as key examples, discussing how the mixed material changes permanently as it sets.

Day 2: Investigate mixing processes that involve heat, cooling, and moisture. Compare mixing and cooking (dough), mixing and cooling (jelly), and mixing flour and water to make glue, helping learners identify what each process has in common and how the end product differs from the starting materials.

Day 3: Focus on clay bricks as an example of mixing, drying, and firing. Consolidate the week’s learning by having learners group and compare all the processes covered, reinforcing the idea that different combinations of steps produce different new materials with different uses.

Download Your Lesson Plan

Download the full 3-day lesson plan as a Word document. Includes detailed activities, differentiation notes, and assessment guidance.

Download Lesson Plan (Word)