Salt

Produced by FunKids Radio and the RSC, this short snippet uses Kareena and her superhero friend K-Mistry to introduce children to to the properties of salt.

This podcasts can be used as a ’hook’ when introducing the topic to your students, or at the end of a lesson to stimulate discussion about what they have learnt.

If you teach primary science, see the headings below to find out how to use this resource:

Skill development

Children will develop their working scientifically skills by:

• Drawing conclusions and raising further questions that could be investigated, based on their data and observations.
• Using appropriate scientific language and ideas to explain, evaluate and communicate their findings.
• Asking their own questions about scientific phenomena.

Learning outcomes

Children will:

• Observe that some materials will dissolve in liquid to form a solution, and describe how to recover a substance from a solution.
• Demonstrate that dissolving is a reversible change.

Concepts supported

Children will learn:

• That when salt dissolves in water a salt solution called brine is formed.
• That when solids dissolve they don’t ‘disappear’ and that this process is reversible.
• How to recover solids from a solution using evaporation.
• That salt affects the freezing point of water, which is why it is used to prevent ice forming on roads.

Suggested activity use

This activity provides a useful hook into investigating different uses processes involving salt. These could include dissolving, evaporation, use of salt in ‘melting’ ice, preserving foods and microscope work.

Although this recording focuses mainly on the use of salt for preserving food, children could work in small groups, carrying out an activity in a carousel-style approach, to investigate the different processes. You could also expand the activities to involve different dissolvable solids other than salt.

Practical considerations

If you create a carousel of several activities, you may need additional adults to ensure children engage fully with the activities.

You will also need salt and other dissolvable solids.