Learning and Teaching News
Science News around the school
The students have been busy exploring the amazing physical world of science around them this term.
Walking around each of our classrooms, you can hear our SMDP scientists asking questions, testing ideas and discovering how forces and vibrations help us understand how things move and how sounds are made.
Our Preps, Ones and Twos have moved from investigating push and pull forces to exploring how sound is made. Students have experimented with everyday examples such as humming and noticing the vibration in their throat, tapping or plucking different materials to compare the sounds they make. Through lots of hands-on experiences and explicit teaching, students are learning that vibrations travel through the air to our ears, helping us hear the sounds around us.
Students in Years One and Two are now designing and making their own simple instruments. They are learning to explain how their instrument vibrates to create sound. We look forward to sharing photos of their creations with you soon.
Our Year 3/4 students have continued their work with magnetic and electrostatic forces, learning how to plan fair investigations by predicting how magnets interact with different materials, identifying independent, dependent and controlled variables and recording their materials and steps accurately.
They have also been exploring electrostatic forces, the invisible push and pull created when certain materials are rubbed together. The students have used balloons to observe how rubbing them on hair or fabric builds up an electric charge that can make hair stand up and cause two balloons to repel each other.
Our Year 5/6 students have been deepening their understanding of electrical circuits by learning how to plan and construct simple circuits that show how energy is transferred and transformed. They have been selecting the correct components, drawing circuit diagrams and building working circuits that power different electrical parts. Through this work, they are beginning to explain how electrical energy changes into light, movement or sound within a circuit. Below we have included some photos of the students learning and a sample of a written response to demonstrate their understanding over the unit.
Written by Darlene Grade 6
Kathy Blythe
Learning and
Teaching Leader
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