Metal or Nonmetal?

Eight illustrated cards, eight real elements: copper, iron, aluminum, and gold face off against oxygen, sulfur, helium, and carbon. Each card describes the element's physical properties - shine, bendability, conductivity, or the lack of them - and students fill in the circle: metal or nonmetal? The rule box at the top gives them the property checklist, and a Sum It Up cloze (featuring the vocabulary word luster) locks in the rule at the bottom.

What's Included

• 1 student page: 8 illustrated sort cards (4 metals, 4 nonmetals) plus a Sum It Up fill-in with word bank
• 1 teacher key page with the answer and a one-line property-based reason for every card, plus a Big Idea box
• Letter-size PDF, no prep

How It Helps You Teach

• Directly practices TEKS 6.6C: identify elements as metals or nonmetals based on their physical properties
• Uses real, kid-familiar examples - the wire, the soda can, the balloon, the pencil - so classification connects to everyday life
• The Big Idea confronts the classic mistake: classify by a SET of properties, because "shiny" alone is not enough

Pair It With

This sheet is part of a four-activity Properties of Metals set: Context Clues, Inferences, Science in the News (the copper shortage), and Science Sort. Check out our library for the other three and the full set.

Standards: TEKS 6.6C; NGSS MS-PS1-3. Part of the Daily Science series by Workybooks.