Salt

Additional information

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:

• Selecting and planning the most appropriate ways to answer science questions, recognising and controlling variables where necessary, including:
  • Carrying out comparative and fair tests.
  • Finding things out using a wide range of secondary sources of information.
• 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 methods and findings.

Learning outcomes

Children will:

• Know 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:

• What the process of dissolving is.
• That when substances dissolve, the substance is still present and hasn’t disappeared.
• That dissolved substances can be recovered, and that dissolving is a reversible change.

Suggested activity use

The activity could provide a useful hook into investigating dissolving. Children could look at a range of different solids to determine which dissolve and which don’t. Children could also investigate factors which affect the rate of dissolving.

Alternatively, children could research how salt is used to preserve food and carry out an investigation to compare foods coated in salt and those that aren’t – looking at the rate of decomposition.

Practical considerations

If carrying out an investigation into dissolving, a range of different solids and liquids will be required for children to carry out the investigation.