Classifying of Matter Teaching Resources

Teach students how to classify matter as pure substances or mixtures with engaging activities aligned with the NGSS curriculum.

This collection of printable and digital worksheets, experiments and activities was created by the teachers of the Teach Starter team to save you time on your lesson plans. That means you'll find resources already carefully reviewed by an expert teacher, plus editable options so you can make the adjustments you need to meet your students' needs.

Need some help with your lesson plans? Read on for a guide from our teacher team, including handy definitions of pure substances and mixtures to share with your students.

How Is Matter Classified?

Before you can dive into actually classifying matter, it helps to explain to students what it actually means to classify matter. Here's a helpful explanation from our teacher team that you can use with your class:

Classifying matter is how we organise different types of matter using its properties or characteristics to help us separate the types into different groupings.

We can classify all the matter around us into just two separate types:

1. Pure substances
2. Mixtures

What Is a Pure Substance? A Kid-Friendly Definition

Let's break down pure substances in a way your science classes can understand, shall we?

A pure substance has the following characteristics that help us with classification:

1. It is made up of only one type of matter.
2. It cannot be separated into other substances by physical means.

Pure substance can be broken down into two categories:

1. Elements — These are substances made up of just one kind of atom and cannot be broken down or transformed by a chemical reaction. For example, helium is an element that we classify as a pure substance.
2. Compounds — A compound is made up of two or more elements that have bonded together to form one. These elements are chemically bonded together and cannot be separated. Water is a compound that we classify as a pure substance as its elements — hydrogen and oxygen — are bonded together.

What Is a Mixture? A Kid-Friendly Definition

If a pure substance is comprised of just one type of matter and cannot be broken down, it might not surprise your students to hear that mixtures have the opposite characteristics.

A mixture:

1. Is made up of two or more different types of matter
2. Can be separated by physical means

A kid-friendly example of a mixture is a bowl of milk and cereal. There are two different types of matter in the bowl, and you can separate the two types (although it might get messy!).