Working scientifically
The following objectives are taught throughout our topics, whenever possible:
- Ask relevant questions and using different types of scientific enquiries to answer them.
- Setting up simple practical investigations, comparative fair tests.
- Making systematic and careful observations and where appropriate taking accurate measurements using standard units using a range of equipment including thermometers and data loggers.
- Gathering recording, classifying and presenting data in a variety of ways to help in answering questions.
- Recording findings using simple scientific language, drawing, labelled diagrams, keys, bar charts and tables.
- Using results to draw simple conclusions, make predictions for new values, suggest improvements and raise further questions.
- Identifying differences, similarities or changes related to simple scientific ideas and processes.
- Using straight forward scientific evidence to answer questions to support their findings.
Year 3
The following objectives are taught in each topic:
| Plants |
- Identify and describe the functions of different parts of flowering plants: roots, stem/trunk, leaves and flowers.
- Explore the requirements of plants for life and growth (air, light, water, nutrients from soil, and room to grow).
- Investigate the way in which water is transported within plants.
- Explore the part that flowers play in the life cycle of flowering plants, including pollination, seed formation and seed dispersal.
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| Animals, including humans |
- Identify that animals, including humans, need the right types and amount of nutrition, and that they cannot make their own food; they get nutrition from what they eat.
- Identify that humans and some other animals have skeletons and muscles for support, protection and movement.
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| Rocks |
- Compare and group together different kinds of rocks on the basis of their appearance and simple physical properties.
- Describe in simple terms how fossils are formed when things that have lived are trapped within rock.
- Recognise that soils are made from rocks and organic matter.
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| Light |
- Recognise that they need light in order to see things and that darkness is the absence of light.
- Notice that light is reflected from surfaces.
- Recognise that light from the sun can be dangerous and that there are ways to protect their eyes.
- Recognise that shadows are formed when the light from a light source is blocked by a solid object.
- Find patterns in the way that the size of shadows change.
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| Forces and magnets |
- Compare how things moves on different surfaces.
- Notice that some forces need contact between 2 objects, but magnetic forces can attract at a distance.
- Observe how magnets attract or repel each other and attract some materials and not others.
- Compare and group together a variety of everyday materials on the basis of whether they attract to a magnet, and identify some magnetic materials.
- Describe magnets as having 2 poles.
- Predict whether two magnets will attract or repel each other, depending on which poles are facing.
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Year 4
The following objectives are taught in each topic:
| Living things and their habitats |
- Recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways.
- Explore and use classification keys to help group, identify and name a variety of living things in their local and wider environment.
- Recognise that environments can change and that this can sometimes pose dangers to living things.
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| Animals, including humans |
- Describe the simple functions of the basic parts of the digestive system in humans.
- Identify different types of teeth in humans and their simple functions.
- Construct and interpret a variety of food chains, identifying producers, predators and prey.
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| States of matter |
- Compare and group materials together, according to whether they are solids, liquids or gases.
- Observe that some materials change state when they are heated or cooled, and measure or research the temperature at which this happens in degrees Celsius.
- Identify the part played by evaporation and condensation in the water cycle and associate the rate of evaporation with temperature.
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| Sound |
- Identify how sounds are made, associating some of them with something vibrating.
- Recognise that vibrations from sound travel through a medium to the ear.
- Find patterns between the pitch of a sound and features of the object that produced it.
- Recognise that sounds get fainter as the distance from the sound source increases.
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| Electricity |
- Identify common appliances that run on electricity.
- Construct a simple series electrical circuit, identifying and naming its basic parts, including cells, wires, bulbs, switches and buzzers.
- Identify whether or not a lamp will light in a simple series circuit, based on whether or not the lamp is part of a complete loop with a battery.
- Recognise that a switch opens and closes a circuit and associate this with whether or not a lamp lights in a simple series circuit.
- Recognise some common conductors and insulators, and associate metals with being good conductors.
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