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Key Stage 2 Science

Science at Key Stage 2 offers children the opportunity to develop their knowledge and understanding of scientific processes and consider the skills and concepts behind them. They can relate these ideas to everyday life and experiences, exploring values and attitudes through science. They learn to share ideas and consider ways in which their theories can be tested

Experimental and investigative science

Your child will develop investigative skills and be taught that it is important to test ideas using evidence from observation and measurement. They are encouraged to think about what might happen when test conditions are altered, and about the type of evidence, equipment and materials to use.

Life and living processes

Common life processes to humans, animals and plants (such as nutrition, movement, growth and reproduction); about the role of the skeleton and muscles to support, protect and help us to move; that the heart acts as a pump to circulate the blood around the body.

Microorganisms - that these are tiny living organisms that can be beneficial (for example, in the breakdown of waste) or harmful (for example, in causing disease or food to go mouldy).

Materials

Grouping and classifying materials, everyday uses and the effects of processes (such as heating, dissolving, melting, freezing, evaporating). How to separate solid particles by sieving.

Physical processes

Constructing circuits and understanding how they work, attraction and repulsion between magnets and magnetic materials, and gravity.

Light and sound - that light cannot pass through some materials, and that sounds are really vibrations that require a medium (for example, metal, wood, glass, air) through which to travel to the ear.

The Sun, Earth and Moon - how day and night are related to the spin of the Earth, that the Earth orbits the Sun once each year, and that the Moon takes approximately 28 days to orbit the Earth.

Boy with telescope

Get ahead at home

  • Look up information about the different food types required for a balanced diet. Why are they needed? Plan a balanced meal together
  • Look at books together on the life cycle stages and talk about it
  • Plant mustard seeds in soil and place them in different environments - dark, light, wet, dry. After a determined period look at them and note difference - draw the differences or take photographs and get books to find out some information
  • Look at a torch and how it works and show your child how to change a plug
  • Try the experiments with your child. Put forward a hypothesis (formulation of a thought) to explain your observations, such as ‘When I put a seed in a wet environment it grows' or ‘If I place a round object on a flat surface it rolls', or ‘What happens if I put sugar in a full cup of water at room temperature?' What will happen if continue to add the sugar?
  • Teach them about the contributions of different nations to science
 

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