The definition of matter caught my attention - anything that has mass and occupies space is matter. It was a familiar definition, deeply ingrained into my mind, like many Nepali people, having had to memorize it for many years during school days. I stood at the back of a fourth grade science class, observing how curricular subjects were usually taught at schools in Kathmandu. Karkhana Samuha, the organization I worked at, was partnering with the school to design and implement some playful learning lessons. My visit was a part of the design process, trying to understand the context and audience.

It was a well decorated, spacious classroom with a familiar seating arrangement - two columns of long benches and desks with seating capacity of 3, welded together. Students on each bench leaned on the desk behind for back support, except for the ones in the last bench, due to a substantial gap between the wall and the last bench. A whiteboard was placed on the opposite wall, in front of the left column of desks. Above the whiteboard, towards the middle of both columns, was a screen connected to a laptop using a cable. There’s a slide on the screen about matter - the lesson being taught. The walls were decorated with various colored charts with texts, drawings and cutouts.

The teacher was a young woman in her late twenties. She had a bright smile on her face, and talked to students in a fun, lively manner. Having explained the slides on the screen, she posed a couple of questions for the students.

“What is matter?”

“Name any two matter around you.”

An assignment soon followed — Define matter. Name any 5 matter and draw their pictures.

Students had 15 minutes for it.

The students seemed engaged in the assignment, and the teacher had taken a break from explaining things. I took this opportunity, with the teacher’s permission, to walk around the class and look at how students worked. Glancing at the notebooks, I noticed that students had written identical definitions — the one given in the book. The examples provided are the objects they often see inside the class, or in the school premises.

One of the students seemed to have finished her work early. I guessed so because unlike other students, she sat upright and wasn’t writing. Curious how the students actually understood the concept of matter, I approached her. She was flipping through her science book. I learnt that her name is Rupa. She agreed to answer some questions I had.

“Can you explain what you understand by mass and space?” I began with a simple question I was curious about. I had been wondering, although these students knew the definition, how they understood these properties.

She struggled to articulate, but her response communicated an intuitive understanding of the concept represented by the terms. I don’t recall what exactly she had said. I wish I had taken note of her words. Encouraged by her understanding of the basic concepts, I gave her an unusual question.

“Can you name something that is not matter?” I didn’t have any specific objective behind asking this question. It seemed like a fun question to think about, and I was curious to know how she had conceived this notion.

She looked thoughtful for some seconds. It made me wonder if the question was too complicated for her. I told her to take some time to think, and that I’d be back to hear her response.

Meanwhile, walking around the room, I noticed students flipping through the pages of the textbook, not to search for an answer but to read chapters or see the imaged they found interesting. One of those images was an illustration of molecules, shown to explain the concept of matter visually - everything around us is made up of extremely tiny, indivisible particles. I wondered how these students made sense of these abstract ideas. My reverie was soon broken by a now familiar voice. Rupa was calling me.

“Sir, you said you’d be back to get my answer,” she said as I walked up to her bench. I was pleasantly surprised. I hadn’t expected my question to engage her for long.

“Right,” I nodded, mildly delighted by her interest.

“So did you find something that is not matter?” I asked, curious.

“A balloon without air inside it is not a matter,” she replied, confident.

I find such responses from students fascinating, because they give a glimpse of their understanding of these concepts. Right or wrong is the least concerning thing here.

“And why do you say so?” I followed up.

There was a short pause. My attention went back to the buzzing sound of illegible hum, with sporadic moments of loud words being exchanged.

“Because…” Rupa added, “the air in it is gone and it has no space.”

I was further intrigued with her response. She had noticed that the air in the balloon was occupying space. But how did she see the deflated balloon itself? What was her understanding of it as a matter?

“hmm…” I nodded. “But what about the rubber cover of the balloon?” I made a gesture of pulling a deflated balloon with my hands.

“Oh… okay,” she said, gently throwing her head back. She had understood the implication.

“That was a really good attempt.” I smiled. “Why don’t you try again?”

I moved ahead with observations in the classroom. Most students had begun drawing and coloring the objects they had listed as matter. The teacher must have added this task to keep them engaged.

The designated time for the assignment got over, and the teacher resumed the lesson. They were now learning about the different states of matter. The teacher reminded the students that they had already studied these concepts in the third grade, last year. Thus, she expected them to know the definitions, she said. Nepal’s science curriculum has identical topics in consecutive grades, with some new concepts and additional information introduced with each year.

The students exhibited an intuitive understanding of the types of matter and could easily tell what state a particular object belongs to, such as ice, water, or ring. But they struggled to produce a coherent, succinct definition, as provided in the textbook.

The ringing of bell indicated the end of class, and students slowly started moving outside the room for a break. As I put my notebook and pen in the bag and prepared to leave, Rupa approached me and said, “I have figured out the answer to your question.”

I turned towards her, eager to hear her thoughts, but also surprised that she was persistent with that question till the very end. I looked at her, curious what she might have come up with.

“Sir, there is nothing that is not matter,” she said. The quiet delight of having figured something out was visible on her face.

I could only smile and acknowledge her insight. I hadn’t expected this leap in her understanding. By giving her the question, I had simply aimed at providing her with something interesting to think about. Her realization was a more than pleasant surprise to me. It was much more than just a right answer. The most interesting thing for me was that Rupa reached this moment of clarity without receiving any new information. She already knew a lot about matters, but most of it was intuitive, experience based that she hadn’t reflected much on. Some information she had came from the science lessons. Rupa was able to build connections between the things she already knew, with the help of some scaffolding, to come to a coherent understanding of matter.

We could call this an instance of meaningful learning for Rupa — she connected her intuitive understanding of matter with the concepts she learned in the classroom. Some guiding questions were all that was needed as scaffolding. The questions helped Rupa look at the concept of matter in an unusual way, and having a teacher to provide feedback on her responses, and nudge her thinking in the right direction supported her inquiry.

Rupa’s inquiry validated the notion that providing students with something interesting to think can be a powerful approach to support their learning. Our mainstream education, on the contrary, emphasizes on giving students synthesized information to process and remember. It might not always be a bad thing, but solely focused on that, we lose sight of numerous such instances that students come across, both within and outside the classroom. This incident represents potential moments of clarity abundant in ordinary settings of classrooms, waiting for right scaffolding to surface.