Grade 5 NST Term 2 Week 8: Processing Materials and How Properties Change

Your Week Ahead

This week in Grade 5 Natural Sciences and Technology, learners take a closer look at materials and what happens to them when we process them. The big idea is that processing changes materials, and the product you end up with can look, feel, and behave very differently from what you started with. Think about wheat becoming bread, or sugarcane becoming sugar. Same origin, very different result.

In the CAPS sequence, this topic builds on earlier work learners have done on materials and their properties. By now, learners should have a working understanding of what a property is, things like colour, texture, hardness, and flexibility. This week pushes them further by asking them to think about why we process materials and what we gain or lose in doing so. It is a topic that connects naturally to everyday life, which makes it one of the more accessible and engaging weeks in the term.

Coming in, learners should ideally be able to name and describe basic properties of familiar materials. If some learners are still shaky on that, a quick five-minute review at the start of Day 1 will go a long way. The key vocabulary to introduce and reinforce throughout the week includes raw materials, natural materials, and processed materials. Getting these three terms clear and distinct is the foundation everything else rests on this week.

What Teachers Are Searching For

• Processing materials lesson plan Grade 5 CAPS: Teachers looking for a structured, ATP-aligned plan for this topic will find this week’s lesson plan covers all three days with clear objectives, practical activities, and assessment guidance built in.
• Difference between raw, natural, and processed materials Grade 5: This is the conceptual heart of the week. The lesson plan breaks this distinction down step by step, with examples learners can relate to from their own homes and communities.
• Note on unrelated searches: Some visitors arrive here searching for things like “weather report Grade 5 English FAL,” which is a different subject and topic entirely. If that is what you need, check the Grade 5 English FAL resources on the site. For NST Term 2 Week 8, you are in the right place.

This Week’s Lesson Plan

The three-day plan moves learners from building vocabulary and understanding, through investigation and comparison, to consolidation and communication of what they have learned.

Day 1: Introduce key vocabulary (raw, natural, and processed materials) using familiar everyday examples. Learners sort picture cards or real objects into the three categories and discuss their choices as a class.

Day 2: Learners investigate how processing changes properties. Using simple examples such as raw versus cooked food, or wood versus paper, they compare properties before and after processing and record their observations in a table.

Day 3: Consolidation and communication. Learners choose one processed material and explain in writing or through a labelled diagram where it comes from, how it is processed, and how its properties have changed. This serves as an informal assessment of the week’s learning.

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)