Year 3
The children in year 3 have been investigating light and the effect of opacity on shadow formation. They recapped their learning of transparent and opaque objects and then furthered their investigation into how to make shadows change size by building a shadow puppet theatre and using props at different measurements from the screen to see how they would alter for the audience. The children discovered that if they placed the props and puppets closer to the light source then they would block a greater portion of the light source and produce a greater shadow.
Year 4
Year 4 have explored the science of sound waves by making our own walkie-talkies! In Science we have learned that sound is made by molecules vibrating. In this experiment, we made sounds by vibrating our vocal cords and forcing the sound to travel down a piece of string. The string carried the sound wave and we could clearly hear the sounds on the other end of the walkie-talkie! We successfully passed a secret message down the walkie-talkie and heard it on the other end.
By experimenting, we found out that the string carries less sound waves when it was slack and carried the sound better when the string was tighter. Finally, we added two strings across each other to make a 4-way telephone. Amazingly, the sound we made through one cup travelled down both strings and could be heard on the other three-cup receivers!
Year 5
Year 5 have taken part in a very exciting STEM day, which we linked to our current science topic of materials. The children have learnt about densities of solids and liquids and explored this in an experiment. We learnt the word “immiscible” when we were finding out why water and oil do not mix. The oil floats on the top because it is less dense than the water. We also added syrup to the mix then introduced small objects of different densities, trying to predict what layer they might be suspended in.
The children also developed this knowledge further, using marbling inks, lifting the oily colours off the surface of the water. We wondered why it was called “marbling” so we thought back to our prior learning in geography about earthquakes and volcanoes and how rocks are subjected to heat to make the lovely swirly patterns. The children have then used these beautiful papers to make a Christmas card.
Year 6
Year 6 enjoyed completing a maths and science task in STEM week linked to our current learning – light. The children learnt that when light is reflected it obeys the law of reflection: the angle of incidence always equals the angle of reflection. The children then had a go themselves measuring the angles with a protractor. They had to be very accurate and work as a team to all hold a different piece of apparatus! Most groups were able to find that the angles were equal.
