Virginia SOL 6.5.g

Science6th GradeMatter

The Standard

6.5: The student will investigate and understand that all matter is composed of atoms. Key ideas include

a few elements comprise the largest portion of the solid Earth, living matter, the oceans, and the atmosphere.

Virginia Standards of Learning for Science

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students read tables or pie charts showing elemental composition. They identify the elements with the largest combined share in solid Earth materials, organisms, seawater, and air, then compare the sets.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student identifies iron, oxygen, silicon, and magnesium as the most abundant elements in the solid Earth as a whole. The student recognizes that aluminum is abundant in the crust, and identifies oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen in living matter. The student identifies hydrogen and oxygen in oceans and nitrogen and oxygen in air, using composition data to support each answer.
Common Misconceptions: Students may call water, air, or salt an element, or treat oxygen in water and rock as oxygen gas. They may think seawater is mostly sodium and chlorine because it tastes salty.
How to Assess It: Exit ticket: List the main elements in solid Earth, living matter, oceans, and air, then circle the element shared by all four.

Lesson moves

Give groups 100 colored beads to model element percentages from four composition cards, then compare which colors dominate each model.
Prompt: Why can oxygen be abundant in rocks, water, organisms, and air even though those materials look and behave differently?
Play a four-corner match: call an element set, and students move to solid Earth, living matter, oceans, or atmosphere.
Compare a mineral label, nutrition label, seawater composition table, and air report, circling the most abundant elements.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 6.5.g, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

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