As far as science is concerned, kids are getting a bit more streetwise now. They’ve learnt a few things and they want to know more. Now they’re more likely to question and investigate rather than take the facts unchallenged.
Building on what they’ve learnt during Key Stage 1, children now study a wider range of living things, materials and phenomena. They consider the positive and negative impact of scientific and technological development on the environment and in other contexts. In fact they can ask some very awkward questions at home about recycling and similar issues? Your whole way of life may come under scrutiny? so prepare to stock up on your answers fast!
By now, pupils are able to carry out investigations, use reference materials e.g library books, CD-ROMs and the internet and convey their findings to others. They are taught to use a variety of different methods to convey their results e.g. tables, charts and graphs. After all, a picture tells a thousand words, as they say.
As in Key Stage 1, the National Curriculum for Science divides the work at Key stage 2 into the following four sections:
Click on the icons above to find out more about what your child is being taught in each section, and help yourself to some ideas for reinforcing what’s being taught through fun activities at home.
Key stage 2
Sc1: Scientific Enquiry
In this section children develop their understanding of why they are doing an investigation and how to carry it out. They do so by performing a range of investigations within the science work that falls within any of the other sections e.g. (Sc2, Sc3 or Sc4 – all of which you can read about below).
The work is divided into two main sections ‘Ideas and evidence in science’ and ‘Investigative skills’.
Ideas and Evidence in Science
Science is used to try and explain how living and non-living things work. Ideas need to be tested. This is done by using evidence collected from observations and measurements. Children realise that to answer their questions they need to generate some "scientific evidence".
For instance, what makes plants grow?
To find out we could plant some seeds in different flowerpots. Some we could water, some we could keep in the light and some we could keep in the dark. By seeing what happens to these seeds we can get a better idea of what plants need to grow. This is the basis of testing ideas and coming up with answers. (and of course, it links into work that will be covered by Sc2).
Investigative skills
This concerns the planning of investigations and the presentation of findings. Children are encouraged to think about what they are about to do and plan it carefully.
It involves taking into account facts such as:
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Considering whether the results will have any meaning for the question they are trying to answer – and ensuring this is worth doing in the first place. |
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Repeating experiments to ensure accuracy – and ensuring the results are real. |
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Only varying one factor at a time – and ensuring this is a fair test. |
For more details of what’s taught in this Key Stage, see the Curriculum for Science website
For more information and activities on this area of learning, have a look at this area of the Digital Brain website
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Key stage 2
Sc2: Life Processes and Living Things
In this section children gain a much greater understanding of the living world around them. They absorb an enormous amount of information in preparation for the SATs. Many adults would be hard-pushed to name the diffefrent types of teeth and what their functions are, or assigning different types of animals to a food chain, but these are standard examples of what pupils will learn at this stage.
For full details see the National Curriculum for Science website.
Or perhaps you'd like to look at their section designed specifically for parents DfES - Learning Journey.
What your child is learning - and how to help
Here’s a guide to what’s taught in this section, and what you can do at home to develop your child’s understanding…
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Life processes
Nutrition, growth and reproduction are all life processes and are common to humans and other animals as well as plants.
How you can help:
Discuss what types of things we humans eat and compare it to what some other animals eat. Why is our diet different? Is it because we are different? How? Are some things similar? Why do we need to eat and what would happen if we didn’t?
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Humans and other animals
Children learn about the teeth and how to keep them healthy, about the function of the heart, skeleton and muscles and the importance of exercise.
How you can help:
Help your child locate their pulse in their wrist. The left wrist is usually best. Encourage them to use their first and second fingers on their right hand to press gently along the length of their left wrist. Start just underneath where their watchstrap would be. When they find it – count how many pulses occur in one minute. This is their heart rate at rest. Now encourage them to run about or jump for one minute (As if they need encouraging…). Time their pulse for another minute. So what does exercise do for you?
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Green plants
Children learn about the functions of the different parts of the plant eg. the roots, the stem and leaves, and about how reproduction takes place in the in plants kingdom.
How you can help:
Take a stick of celery and place it in a glass of water that also contains a drop or two of food colouring (or a bust felt-tip which is still full of ink). Leave it overnight. The coloured water will travel up the stem of the celery and appear in the leaves at the top. Cut the celery into slices, and you’ll see dots of colour in a pattern throughout the green (a bit like the lettering in a stick of rock.) This shows how water travels in plants. Your child will be amazed!
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Variation and classification
Children learn to use keys, or a ‘series of questions’ when assigning plants and animals to groups.
For example:
Has it got fur?
or
Has it got scales?
Each question can be answered yes or no. Children learn to construct line diagrams so that each animal or plant they have to classify can be easily grouped by answering a sequence of questions.
For a more specific example of this look at the BBC ReviseWise Factsheet
How you can help:
Have a go at making up a key for the inhabitants of your house – that’s the people, pets and plants. If that seems a bit tricky, ask your child to select ten living things at random and list them. Try and compile a key to classify them into groups. (Remember each question must only give yes/no answers.)
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Living things in their environment
In this section, pupils begin to learn about how animals, plants and organisms are each part of a food chain, and about how micro-organisms such as yeast behave in the making of bread. They also discover how animals and plants are suited to their environment.
How you can help:
Have a go at making bread! Explain that yeast 'works' by feeding on the starches and sugars in the flour, producing carbon dioxide. This gas allows the dough to expand and rise. It can be tricky to get the bread just the way you like it... but with a bit of luck it'll look amazing and taste brilliant!
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Online Activities
Help your child discover plants
Be a vegetable detective … or make a sensory fruit salad. Make the most of all the fun of the fruit stall in this DfES website for parents.
Caring for the environment: Build a prairie
This is an interactive activity from an American education site that allows you to choose what you would plant to rebuild a prairie habitat – and see how your prairie fares!
Who lives here?
An interactive adventure game for younger children that challenges them to return animals to the continent they come from...
For further details on what’s taught in this part of the curriculum check the National Curriculum for Science website
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Key stage 2
Sc3: Materials and their Properties
As in all areas of the KS2 curriculum, pupils develop and reinforce the knowledge they gained in the earlier Key Stage. In this case, they learn more about the different types of material that exist. They consider in more detail the properties of materials and how they can change, and they learn how mixtures of materials can be separated eg. salt from seawater.
This is the section which will particularly appeal to the chemists of the future. The scope for investigations within this section is immense. Heating, cooling, filtering, evaporating – they’re all here! Do you remember growing salt crystals? No? Do you want to have a go? Read on – instructions coming up!
What your child is learning - and how to help
Here’s a guide to what’s taught in this section, and what you can do at home to develop your child’s understanding…
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Grouping materials
Children learn to compare the physical properties of materials such as strength and magnetic behaviour, and work out whether materials are thermal or electrical conductors. They also learn how to describe and group rocks and soils.
How you can help:
Help your child make some honeycomb toffee. It’s just like pumice stone to look at and is therefore a good way of learning about geological processes… but fortunately tastewise, it’s much more like a Crunchie Bar!
Here’s what to do
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First grease a baking tin. |
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In a large heavy-based saucepan put 2oz sugar and 4oz golden syrup. |
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Boil syrup and sugar together for about 5 mins or until it is a rich brown colour. |
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While it’s still boiling, stir in half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda very quickly. This releases carbon dioxide into the mixture in lots of little bubbles – the secret of the light structure. |
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Pour the mixture into a well-greased sandwich tin and allow to cool and set. When it’s almost firm loosen edges with knife and turn out on to a wire tray. |
The honeycomb can be broken with a hammer when it’s set, forming similar patterns of cracks to those you’ll find in rocks after earthquakes.
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Changing materials
In Key Stage 2, children learn about the process of dissolving, and about the water cycle and the processes of evaporation and condensation. They also learn about ‘reversible’ changes (e.g. freezing – material returns to its original state when it has heated back up) and non-reversible changes (e.g. plaster of Paris with water – cannot recover the original material after this change)
How can I help?
Try growing a salt crystal. Take a clean glass jar and half fill it with warm water. Ask your child to spoon in salt and stir the mixture until no more salt will dissolve. It’s best to do this a teaspoon at a time so your child can see whether it has dissolved or not. After a while the salt will settle at the bottom and no more will dissolve. This is known as a saturated solution.
Here’s what to do
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Get your child to take a piece of cotton and wind it around a pencil a few times. |
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Place the pencil over the top of the jar so the string dangles into the liquid (you might need a piece of blutak to keep it in place). |
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Leave the jar on a windowsill for a couple of days, and make sure the string is always immersed in the liquid. |
After 2 days, you’ll find you have small crystals of salt growing on it. Over a few days you can grow the crystals even bigger. Do you notice anything about them? They are perfectly cubic. You can even have a competition to see who can grow the biggest…
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Separating mixtures of materials
Children learn to separate mixtures of solids or liquids by filtering or sieving, using evaporation to recover dissolved solids, and using knowledge of solids, liquids and gases to work out how mixtures might be separated
How can I help?
Try using coffee filter papers to filter solid/liquid mixtures such as sand and water. Try filtering a mixture of flour and water. Did it work? If the water still comes through cloudy it may be because the holes in the filter are too large. They're small enough to stop the ground coffee coming through but not small enough to stop the flour particles... Discuss with your child how a filter is like a sieve but with holes that are too small for you to see unless you've got a microscope.
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Online Activities
Help your child discover materials
This DfES site is just what you need for an introduction to materials at this level.
The Dissolve Test
A practical activity to decide whether common foodstuffs dissolve in water.
Science Court
This is a novel activity to answer the question Is there water in the air?. It provides hands on investigations and poses the question through a courtroom setting.
For more detailed information about what’s taught in this area of the curriculum, check out the National Curriculum for Science website.
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Key stage 2
Sc4: Physical Process
In this section children develop the understanding of electricity, light and sound they gained in Key Stage 1. Our daily lives are all about these phenomena – mobile phones, computers, electronic games all rely on these three phenomena.
Remind your child of that next time they’re questioning the worth of their education. We have a lot to be thankful for – smart cookies can take advantage of their education to make a great career and possible huge fortune for themselves in the future!
What your child is learning - and how to help
Here’s a guide to what’s taught in this section, and what you can do at home to develop your child’s understanding?
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Electricity
Children learn about circuits, and for example how the brightness of bulbs depends on the number of components in a circuit e.g. batteries, wires, bulbs. They also learn how to draw simple circuit diagrams.
How you can help:
You might want to try discussing the idea of circuits with your child by likening it to a railway network. (Please stay with us on this one it does work – honestly!) The trains provide the power (like the battery), the carriages are like the bulbs, the track is the wires and the signals are the switches.
The circuit (or track) needs to be complete or else everything will stop. Look what happens when the signals are down (this is what happens when you switch off – you break the circuit). The more carriages you want to pull the more power you need. So, more trains please!
If this leaves you completely in the dark (no pun intended) then click here for a fantastic onine explanation and for activities on the subject of circuits.
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Forces and motion
Children learn about forces such as gravity, friction, magnetic attraction and repulsion and how they affect the motion of bodies.
How you can help:
Did you know the Earth is one enormous magnet spinning on its axis? Hence the North Pole and the South Pole. Prove this to your child by making a compass. You’ll need a sewing needle, a small bar magnet, a small round piece of cork and a glass or bowl full of water that you can float the compass in at the end.
Run the magnet over the eye-end of the needle sixty times - in the same direction each time. Now stick the needle through the piece of cork. Place your compass in the water, and make sure there is no metal nearby (and no other compass either). The sharp end of the needle will swing around to point to magnetic North. That’s because athough the Earth's magnetic field is relatively weak, by floating the needle, you allow it to orientate itself towards magnetic north.
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Light and sound
Children learn that darkness is an absence of light, and that sounds travel from souces and are heard when they enter your ear…
How you can help:
Watch the sunset one night with your child. Notice how the light starts to fade as the sun is setting. Comment on how it is not totally dark immediately because the sun is very strong source of light and it has not disappeared far enough yet beyond the horizon.
Switch the TV on, and see how far away you can walk from it and still hear what they’re talking about. What about if you close the door to the TV room?
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The Earth and beyond
e.g. the Sun, Earth and Moon are spheres, day and night are related to the Earth spinning on its own axis.
How you can help:
Teach your child the following mnemonic to learn the sequence of the planets:
My Very Easy Method Just Shows Us Nine Planets
Or
Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto
How many Brownie points is that worth?
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Online Activities
Help your child Discover Light and Sound
Help your child discover electricity
Help your child discover the solar system
Easy-peasy instructions for creating a sundial out of a paper plate and a few other bits and pieces. So long as the clouds stay away, you’ll be able to tell the time until sundown!
Make a model see-saw
A practical activity
Science court
A novel practical activity to answer the question “ Would you be able to hear an explosion in outer space?”
Sprat's Adventures 9-11 years
Interactive science adventures
Flicks adventures 7-9 years
Interactive science adventures
Or perhaps you’d like to look at their sections designed specifically for parents
DfES – Learning Journey (Electricity)
DfES – Learning Journey (Light and Sound)
For full details see the National Curriculum for Science website.
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PAGE LINKS
The National Curriculum
Science at School
Ages and Keystages
Homework Help
Get with the Lingo
Sats and League Tables
Other Useful Links
The NCPTA
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