Science
It has been another wonderful few weeks of investigations and discoveries in the Science room! It is an absolute joy and the highlight of my day to see our students so curious and engaged in these sessions. I often feel privileged to have the opportunity to create learning experiences for our young people.
Our junior students have explored light and sound whilst our older students have added heat and electricity to their physics learning!
Students enjoyed making their own harmonicas (apologies for the noise) and discussing how sound travels through vibrations. Our simple ear model created a great visual for the students to understand how sound travels through our ear and to our brain.
We strived to make our own rainbows (which can prove tricky depending on the sun’s position in the sky!) as we learnt about light refraction, explored light absorption by making fun shadows on the wall and were fascinated to see how light can bounce off as it is reflected from one surface onto another, almost like magic!
Our mid and senior school students were fascinated by the three ways heat can be transferred from one place to another through some interesting investigations. These involved heat conduction along spoons made of different materials and melting butter, food colour dispersion in glasses of water with differing temperatures and the effect of heat radiation from candles upon a pinwheel. Ask your child to share with you what they learnt!
The Grade 5/6 students learnt about different energy sources that can create electricity, including batteries. They discovered how electrical circuits work, enabling the production of another form of energy, for example, a circuit within a torch enables light energy to be created. Through making our own circuits we discovered that in order for a circuit to work there needs to be a power source and no gaps within the circuit. It was a fun challenge for the students to firstly predict if a circuit would work based on interpreting symbols in diagrams, and then, to create the circuit in order to test it!
This week we enjoyed some more explore time and reviewing our learning from the term. We all earned a class reward – well done to each class for filling their class jar full of stars through demonstration of our 3 R’s over the course of the term!
During our final session for the term next week, the students will be engaged in a mini project where they will each make something physics related, linked to our learning this term! Looking forward to this fun finish to Science this term.
Next term we dive into Earth and Space Science!
Clare Grainger
Science & PE Specialist Teacher