Autumn 1 | Clitheroe Pendle Primary School

Materials

This is our main topic for this half term. Exploring wood, metal, glass, plastic, rock and fabric. We will also develop our use and understanding of scientific words.

Focus Skills - Comparing, grouping and sorting

Today the children received a envelope containing different materials - fabric, metal, glass and plastic. Our questions - what are they, what are they made of, which material is the most/least important?

Brilliant answers 2M

Metal is the most important it`s strong.

I think wood is important but we have to cut the trees down.

You can make lots of things with plastic but I don`t think it`s the most important.

Plastic is the least important, we don`t need it.

I think plastic is not important, it`s destroying our planet.

Focus Skills - Comparing, grouping and using scientific language.

Our set of objects has now increased to glass, wood, metal, plastic, rock and plastic.

Time to develop our scientific language - transparent, opaque, rigid, flexible. Some of these adjectives were added to our recording table.

Focus Skills - Observing closely, using scientific knowledge.

Today we decided to check how observant we are spotting different materials inside and outside.

What could we touch from our seat, inside the classroom and outdoors in our school environment?

After looking at our list of objects it was time to think about the property of the materials and if it was a good choice.

Focus Skills - Carrying out simple tests.

We began our lesson thinking about what we could do with playdough. The children responded with what they could make.

To link with our English this week instead of looking at nouns we changed to adjectives and thought about what we could do to the playdough. They responded with pull, stretch, twist, bend, roll and squash. Then it was time for a bit of dough disco. We each had our own playdough and danced to the song `Happy` changing our shape of playdough.

The children then drew their playdough and added adjectives.

How wonderful we are now getting at recording our scientific facts. What can we do with a piece of rock, playdough, plastic, wood, elastic, string and metal?

To end the lesson the children were asked to make a model with their playdough.

Focus Skills - To carry out a simple test.

Experiment time. There is a hole in the pirate ship. We need to investigate our collection of materials and test them. Today we learnt what a prediction is.

After finishing our experiment the children decided what would be the best material to mend the hole in the ship. Some children through their previous knowledge decided it should be metal even though that wasn`t in our test today.

Seasons

Throughout the year 2M will do their investigations looking at our school grounds focusing on the changes in the trees and bushes.

We have already been out and about in our school grounds. The children were able to follow the clues to find the 5 trees that we will observe throughout each season.

Sycamore, Oak, Holly, Willow and Horse Chestnut.