Science Term 3 Newsletter

Welcome to Term 3

It has been an exciting start to term 3, as students have started to explore key concepts in Physical Sciences, investigating how forces, motion, light, and sound help us understand the world around us.

Foundation:

Students are exploring forces and how objects move. Students are exploring how they move their own bodies, and how they can move different objects around them. They engage in investigations to explore how different objects can be pushed, pulled, rolled, spin, slid, or bounced. Students are engaging in creating moving toys using everyday materials, to further their understanding of how objects move in different ways. Students continue to develop their inquiry skills to make a prediction, observe and test their ideas. They are developing their inquiry skills by using forces to test how objects move and explore the factors that make objects easier or harder to move. 

Year 1 and 2:

Students are learning about sound and how we hear it. Students are exploring how sounds are made and how sound waves travel to our ears. Students engage in different investigations to explore how vibrations create sound. They will explore the concepts of pitch and loudness, and engage in creating sound-producing devices using everyday materials, such as box guitars, to further their understanding of how pitch and volume can be changed. Students are developing their inquiry skills to make predictions, observe carefully, and test their ideas. They are learning to compare sounds and describe what they hear using scientific language.  

Year 3 and 4:

Students are developing their understanding of forces. Students are exploring what a force is and are beginning to explain what happens to an object when a force is applied. Students are exploring the concepts of contact forces and non-contact forces. They are engaging in investigations to explore what happens to objects when forces such as push pull, friction and magnetic force act on them. Students are developing their understanding of the concept of motion by experimenting with pushing and pulling objects. Students will engage in investigations to explore how magnets can attract or repel objects without touching them. They will also investigate which materials are magnetic and which are non-magnetic. Students are able to develop their scientific skills by conducting investigations and share their findings with the class.

Year 5 and 6:

This term, students learn about light and how light usually behave. Students are exploring the concepts of how light can be reflected and investigate how we see light. Using a variety of objects, students will explore how light interacts differently with transparent, translucent, and opaque materials. Students will investigate refraction and the bending of light, and use their understanding to create visual effects, such as rainbows. Students will also learn about how lenses have been developed over time to solve vision problems and use convex and concave lenses. They are also using coloured glasses to explore how light passes through a lens of different shape or colour.  They will develop their inquiry skills of recording observations using diagrams. 

Communication

If you have any queries along the way, please feel free to contact me using my email 

Nahal Atashkadeh (Nahal.Atashkadeh@education.vic.gov.au) or using Class Dojo.