All About Matter for Middle School Science

Let's start at the beginning when it comes to matter. What is it? This is a question scientists and philosophers have grappled with for millennia. Seriously, the Ancient Greeks and Indian scholars spent tons of time thinking about the "stuff" around them.

Our current definition of matter is pretty vague. Matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. Here is the tough part of the definition. If you look up mass, it is a measurement of the amount of matter in an object.

To get out of these circular definitions, you can think of mass as atoms. Atoms are too tiny to see, but you can use a model to think about them. We are going to cover atoms in another blog post. For now, if you are still struggling to understand matter, you can think of atoms as the tiny marbles that make up everything around you. Atoms do not look or act like marbles, so this isn't a perfect analogy. Let me know if you think it is helpful or unhelpful.

Here is a slideshow to help you understand matter. Teachers, if you use this slideshow with your students, give them time to talk in small groups to answer the questions and discuss what they are thinking. Talking about things is one of the best ways to learn about them!

Want more practice thinking about matter? Want a way to start conversations about matter? This free sorting activity will help you think about what is matter and what is not matter. The answer key is included.

Matter is just the starting point for a bunch of fascinating topics in middle school science. Use the links below to get the other topics.

States of Matter

Properties of Matter

Composition of Matter

Changes in Matter

Matter and Energy

I hope you enjoyed this resource on matter! If you want to support my work of making school topics accessible and engaging for students and easy to implement for teachers, you can shop at my Teachers Pay Teachers store and/or share this website with others!

Teachers Pay Teachers