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How can I get my students to understand the importance of learning about different forms of matter?

I think you should find out where they are getting confusee first.

Hi! I think first you should definitely try and pre assess the students to see what content they are aware of and what their areas for growth are. After you determine this, it may be a little easier to plan the lesson. When pre-assessing you can ask a few questions realating to the topic and to the standard that you intend to teach. I would also suggest looking for lessons online, modifying these lessons, or creating your own. Hope this helps. Happy teaching!

Hello Hannah, 

You didn't mention the grade(s) that you teach so I can't pinpoint standards and grade-appropriate activities, but I will try to help you. I like to check for my students' understanding and check for misconceptions using science notebooks. You may want to pose a few questions including the one you ask about above. Why is it important to learn about the different forms of matter? What do you know about the different forms of matter? Using prior knowledge, can you give examples of the different forms of matter? When you are done with the unit, you can have the students reflect on these questions again.

I also like to use Oobleck (cornstarch and water mixture) to let the students investigate whether Oobleck is a solid, liquid, or gas. 

You will also want to explore the 'Explore All Resources' tab above on the NSTA website!

Have fun!

Hannah, I think maybe one way that would help students care about it more is if you intrigued them first with phenomena. If they could see how interesting and cool and transformational different forms of matter are then I think they would care more. I think after their interest is caught then they could explore it then problem solve and construct something that changes into different forms of matter. I agree with what other replies said about seeing where their misconceptions are at too!