Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

Year 6

Our curriculum in action

Year 3 - Food and our Bodies

Our Y3 super scientists had fun sorting food packaging to learn all about the different food groups – fruit and vegetables, carbohydrates, proteins, fats and dairy. They learned what herbivores, carnivores and omnivores are and used their maths skills to sort different animals into these groups.

Learning about the skeleton came next where they worked in groups to complete a big skeleton jigsaw and learn the scientific name for lots of the bones. Do you know where your cranium is? Lots of bones have special functions and the children explored this, while also learning that not every living creature has a skeleton on the inside of the body – an endoskeleton. Did you know that some creatures have an exoskeleton and some have a hydrostatic one? Finally Y3 made models to show how muscles and bones work together to help our bodies move.

Pupil Voice:

What did you like about this topic? I liked leaning about all of the food groups. There was fruit, vegetables, protein, carbohydrate, and dairy

Why do humans need carbohydrates and proteins? Carbohydrates give you energy and protein makes your bones stronger.

What is the difference between a carnivore, herbivore and omnivore?  A carnivore eats meat, a herbivore eats plants and an omnivore eats both meat and plants. 

Year 3 – Forces and Magnets

Children learned that a force is a push or pull that causes a change in speed, direction or shape. They had lots of fun designing an investigation to test how far a toy car will travel on different surfaces. They worked together to think about all the variables and made sure that their tests were fair. Children measured their results with strips of coloured paper and then transformed this into a graph.

Children then explored magnets where they investigated which materials were magnetic and found out that not everything that is made from metal is attracted to a magnet. Finally, they used very careful measuring to investigate whether magnets can attract objects at a distance and which type of magnet was the strongest.

Pupil Voice:

What did you learn about magnets? “I loved the magnet experiments. Some metals are not attracted to magnets – that surprised me.”

How did you investigate friction? “I liked putting the cars on different surfaces and finding out about friction. The car went the furthest on plastic because it was smooth so it didn’t have much friction.

A force is a push or pull that changes direction. speed or shape.

When you are thinking about magnets, what do the words attract and repel mean?  Attract means pull together and repel means pull away.

Year 3 - Rocks and Soils

Our Year 3 scientists had lots of fun using sweets to demonstrate the different types of rock – igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. They learnt about the properties of different rocks and used this to help them explain what rock would be the “best” to make roof tiles from. Learning about fossils came next where they sequenced the process of fossilisation and matched fossils to drawings of dinosaurs by observing features.

The children then started thinking about soil. They learnt what soil was and found out that we get different types of soil. Working in groups, they planned and carried out an investigation to find out how permeable different soils were. They discovered that sometimes scientists don’t get the results they predict and have to think carefully about why this might have happened.

Year 3 were very lucky to get a visit from Katie Dresser, who is a geologist (a person who looks and works with rocks as a career).

Pupil Voice:

What are the 3 different types of rock? They are sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous.

When thinking about rocks, what does permeable mean?  It means water goes into it and through it. 

Tell me a rock that isn’t permeable. When would we use this in the real world?  Marble in your kitchen so it doesn’t let water in. Slate on your roof so it doesn’t let water in.

Year 4 - Teeth and Digestion

Children had great fun building a model digestive system and getting messy to show the journey that food takes through our bodies. They learned the different parts of the digestion system and the special functions they have. Learning then focused on teeth – the different names of teeth, their special jobs and most importantly how to look after our teeth. Children set up an investigation to test whether different drinks affect our teeth in different ways. Don’t worry – we didn’t use actual teeth but instead used egg shells because, like our teeth, they have enamel. They found out that water caused no damage to the “teeth” but fizzy sugary pop and fruit juices attacked the enamel and ruined the “teeth”! Finally, the Y4 scientists learned all about food chains and explored how a small change to our environment can have a big impact on wildlife.

Pupil Voice:

What do you like about science? If you want to be a scientist when you grow up you get to learn everything at our school so when you grow up you can be a scientist.

Name 5 parts of the digestive system.  Rectum, salivary glands, teeth, oesophagus, large intestine

The oesophagus is used to break down food with acid. True or False? Explain how you know.  False - the oesophagus lets food travel to the stomach and that is where it is broken down with acid

In a food chain, what is a producer and a consumer? Producer is the food of the prey. Consumer is the thing that eats. 

Year 4 – Sound

Our Y4 scientists’ next topic was sound, where they learned that sound is caused by vibrations which travel in waves. They learned lots of new vocabulary while exploring how we hear – did you know that inside your ear there is a hammer, anvil and stirrup? Next, they investigated pitch and had lots of fun exploring the sound made by different sized boom whackers. They even made their own set of pan pipes to show all they had learned. Finally, they looked for patterns in a set of results all about the volume of sound and even learned what an anomalous result was – a result that doesn’t seem to follow the pattern. Like all good scientists their advice was to carry out lots more tests.

Pupil Voice:

“We used straws to make a pan pipe. The longer tubes made a lower tone because the sound waves have further to go and the sound waves travel faster through the small one so it is a high pitch.”

“Science is one of my favourite lessons because you get to do different experiments. Making pan pipes was lots of fun.”

“I really enjoyed learning about how the ear works – it is so much fun. I loved making the pan pipes. We learned all about pitch. Pitch is how high or low a sound is.”

How are sounds made? They are made by vibrations.

Explain how the sound gets from outside the ear to your brain.  Sound travels through the air and hits the bones which then hits the cochlea. Cochlea has little hairs in that the liquid slushes. The travel on the auditory nerves carry to brain.

How do the size of vibrations affect the volume? The bigger the vibrations, the louder the volume.

What does insulation mean when you are thinking about sound? If you use insulation, it is a material that won’t let sound through. 

Year 4 - Electricity

Children had great fun building working circuits and understanding what is needed to make a complete circuit. They learnt what conductors and insulators are and used this knowledge to investigate a variety of materials. Children then used all they had learnt to make a variety of different switches and explain how they worked using scientific vocabulary. Finally, they were set a series of activities to complete that would test all of their scientific knowledge about electricity and circuits.

Pupil Voice:

What is the benefit of a battery-operated appliance? You can carry it around it.

How would you make a bulb light? You connect both sides of wire to the positive and negative and connect to the metal part of the bulb holder which would complete the circuit to allow the bulb to light up.

What is an electrical conductor? It allows electricity to pass through.

Could you make a switch with a plastic ruler? Explain why. No because plastic is an insulator.

Year 5 - Earth and Space

Our Y5 scientists learned that over time there have been two models of the solar system – the geocentric model and the heliocentric model. They found out that before Nicolaus Copernicus came up with the hypothesis that the sun was at the centre of the solar system (heliocentric), many people believed that our planet was at the centre because they could see that it looked like the sun was moving across the sky. Next, the children learned all about the planets in our solar system, how we measure a year and how we get day and night. Did you know that a day on Venus is longer than a year! It takes Venus longer to rotate once on its axis (a day) than to complete one orbit of the Sun (a year). That's 243 Earth days in one day on Venus and only 225 Earth days in a year on Venus.

Children used their knowledge of day and night to investigate time zones and then went onto understanding more about the moon.  

They also experienced a mobile planetarium visit in school to enrich their learning further. 

Pupil Voice:

What do you like about science? “I like it because science is full of facts and it is really interesting.”

Tom says, “The sun orbits the earth. I know this because I see the sun move every day.” True or false. Explain why.  False because the sun is in the centre of the solar system and the earth is orbiting the sun. 

Name all of the planets in the solar system. Put them in the correct order from the sun.  Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. We can use a mnemonic to help us.

Explain why a year on Mercury is shorter than a year on Earth.   It is closer to the sun so has a shorter orbiting time.

Tom says, “The moon gets bigger or smaller every night.” Is he correct? Explain how you know. No, because it is doesn’t change size. It is the sun’s reflection on it that changes shape and size because of the orbit.

Year 5 - Forces

This topic built on the work done in Y3. Children used their knowledge of forces to draw force diagrams and investigated these by moving Maltesers around the class in different ways. The work was linked to their topic on Earth and Space and children investigated which brake pads would be “the best” for the Mars Rover and what size of parachute would be “best” to land the robot safely on the planet. Our Y5 scientists were able to plan more independently by considering all of the variables and look for patterns in results in order to draw their own conclusions.

Pupil Voice: 

What do you like about science? “ like all of the experiments. We always have something interesting or unusual to do like the Malteser experiment. We were learning about forces with our Maltesers. We learned about blowing forces, gravity and friction. Friction works in the opposite direction to the way you want the Malteser to go.

Does friction only occur between rough surfaces? Explain how you know. No, because there is friction between everything just there is more friction on a rough surface.

Which famous scientist developed the theory of gravity? Isaac Newton

Year 5 - Materials

Our Year 5 scientist’s spring term topic focused on materials and their properties. First of all, they explored lots of scientific vocabulary like flammable and impermeable so they could use these words throughout the topic. They completed investigations – all the time thinking about the variables involved - and also designed their own, to find out information on hardness, transparency and magnetism. They even conducted an investigation on thermal insulation to find out which material would be “best” to wrap around a teacher’s cup in order to keep their tea warm on a cold duty day. Next, Year 5 explored dissolving and learned what soluble and insoluble means and how dissolving is different to melting. Separating materials came next and children had lots of fun sieving, filtering, evaporating and even using magnets to separate mixtures.

Finally, Year 5 scientists explored reversible and irreversible changes. Did you know that you can make plastic from milk and vinegar? This is an example of an irreversible change.

Pupil Voice:

Tom says thermal insulation means it will allow liquids and gases to pass through it. Is he correct? Explain how you know.  No, thermal insulation will  keep the hot or cold inside.

Mr Raw needs to separate a mixture. How could he separate a mixture of sand, Lego and nails? He could use a magnet for the nails, a filtering system to get out the sand and then you’d be left with the Lego.

Year 6 - The human circulatory system

In the autumn term, Y6 had an in depth look at the human circulatory system. They found out how the heart and lungs work together along with arteries, veins and capillaries to provide the body with oxygen. It was lots of fun to go onto the yard and pretend to be oxygenated and deoxygenated blood on its journey around the body. Next, our Y6 scientists were able to consider all of the variables in order to plan an investigation to see if they agreed with another scientist’s hypothesis – Tom says, “Your heart rate increases when you are running because you are moving. It will not go up when you are doing the plank because you are still.” The children then built on their Y3 work on food groups and provided detailed advice to help some characters improve their health with improved diet and exercise. Finally, Y6 focused on drugs. They learned about the positive and negative effects they can have on our bodies and children used their maths skills to analyse data. 

Pupil Voice:

Explain the difference between veins and arteries in the circulatory system. Veins carry deoxygenated blood to the heart and arteries carry oxygenated blood away from the heart.

Name the 4 main parts of the heart and explain how it works as part of the circulatory system. Left ventricle, right ventricle, left atrium and the right atrium. Blood travels around these parts of the heart to oxygenate the blood. 

Year 6 - Electricity

Children had lots of fun in their topic on electricity. They were able to use the correct vocabulary and symbols for parts of a circuit and used these to draw their own circuit diagrams. Y6 especially enjoyed being electricians and using their scientific problem solving skills to find and fix the faults in a variety of circuits. They learned what voltage is and how this affects the components in a circuit. They then used this to create series and parallel circuits and understood why at Christmas time lots of people can’t get their fairy lights to work.

Pupil Voice:

“I like doing experiments. I am enjoying being an electrician and finding faults in the circuits.”

What is voltage? Voltage is the power in the circuit.

Tom says if we are investigating how the volume of a buzzer is affected by the number of buzzers in a circuit, the controlled variable will be the number of buzzers. Is he correct? Explain. No, because you keep a controlled variable the same and the number of buzzers would change.

Explain the link between the brightness of a bulb and the voltage of a battery. The higher the voltage, the brighter the bulb. We investigated this with an experiment which proved this. 

Year 6 - Evolution and Inheritance

In the spring term, Year 6 focused on evolution and inheritance. They used photographs of teachers and their children and Mr Men and Little Miss characters to explore inheritance and even created their own character with specific inherited characteristics. Children then explored real world examples of how inheritance can help farmers breed cows for different characteristics like good milk yield or tasty meat and how dog owners can use selective breeding to create new breeds of dog.

Next children looked at the adaptations of certain animals and plants to their habitats. Part of their work focused on a creature called the peppered moth – sometimes called Darwin’s moth - that evolved (through the process of natural selection) from a white both to become a black moth due to all of the smoke and pollution from the Industrial revolution in Victorian times.

Finally, Year 6 looked closely at some fossil remains and discussed how they thought these helped scientists understand more about evolution.

Pupil Voice:

What is inheritance? Inheritance is when you get something from your parents like your height and eye colour.

Give 3 ways that a creature of your choice is adapted to its environment.  A polar bear has thick fur, black skin underneath to absorb heat in the sun and white fur to blend with snow.

What is natural selection? Natural selection is when living things adapt to survive in their environment.

What information do fossil records tell us? Fossil records tell us what the animal would have looked like when the animal was alive for example the shape of its head. 

Science Week

Year 3

• Salt lowers the freezing point of ice, causing it to melt.
• Melting absorbs heat from the milk mixture, making it cold enough to freeze into ice cream.

Year 4

Year 4 thoroughly enjoyed studying how animals are adapted to their environment. For example, how the fennec fox that lives in desert conditions uses its large ears to cool down and how the sloth that lives in a forest habitat uses its curved claws to hang onto and climb trees.

Pupil Voice:

We learnt about habitats and that animals hunt for other animals as their prey. The one that hunts is the predator. We learnt how animals are adapted to their environment like a camel does not have much fur because it lives in the desert.  

Year 5

Year 5 investigated irreversible changes. We started with warm whole milk and vinegar (liquids) and made casein plastic (solid). Did you know casein plastic was quite common from the early 1900s until about 1945? It was used to make buttons, decorative buckles, beads and other jewellery, fountain pens, the backings for hand-held mirrors, and fancy comb and brush sets. Here is a link to the investigation if you want to try it at home with adult supervision.

Pupil Voice:

"We did an investigation where we used white vinegar, milk and warm water and mixed them together. This turned into a solid after we left it for 24 hours when it became a plastic."

Year 6

Year 6 have been testing out their chemistry skills by making their own bath bombs. Children used their equipment to make their own bath bombs which are made by mixing an acid and an alkali. Ingredients included bicarbonate of soda and citric acid which are dry powders and only react when they are dissolved in water. When you drop the bath bomb in a bath the citric acid and bicarbonate of soda react with each other. This releases bubbles of carbon dioxide gas which makes the water fizz. The children then tested this out by putting the bath bomb in a bowl of water and observed what happened.

Year 6 also looked at an investigation called, 'How black is a black pen?' Inside many black pens is a rainbow of colour trying to get out. Black ink is often made from a blend of other colours. This process is called chromatography which is used to separate mixtures of different molecules. Black ink is often made from a mixture of other colours. The inks dissolve in the water and then move through the paper at different rates, separating out into coloured bands. Children used filter paper and drew black dots, they then added droplets of water onto the black dots and observed what happened. They were amazed by the results!

Pupil Voice:

"We made bath bombs using citric acid and bicarbonate of soda. We mixed it in a bowl with food colouring and water. It then changed colour and was flowing out of the bowl because of a chemical reaction."

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