Change detectives addresses AC Science Understanding ACSSU095 Changes to materials can be reversible or irreversible, through the context of becoming crime scene investigators, identifying and explaining physical and chemical changes to everyday materials.

Change detectives provides students with hands-on opportunities to:

  • investigate if melted or frozen objects can be returned to their original state
  • observe the factors that make materials melt most quickly
  • role-play the behaviour of solids, liquid and gases
  • explore factors relating to evaporation
  • investigate how solids can be dissolved in liquids, if this process is reversible and any reaction that may occur
  • explore what happens when candles are burnt

Students apply their new learning by:

  • planning and conducting an investigation on factors that affect the time it takes for a fizzing tablet to dissolve in water

Linking science with literacy

In the Primary Connections approach, students are supported to create representations that draw on and strengthen their literacy development. In Change detectives, students represent and explain their understanding about how changes to materials can be reversible or irreversible, by creating these representations:

  • Graph
  • Procedural text
  • Report
  • Role play
  • Summary
  • Data table
  • Venn diagram
  • Word wall

External resources

Interactive, animated and curriculum-based content that support educators and engages students.