SEAL Years 1 and 2 Science Links

Transcription

1 SEAL Years 1 and 2 Science Links New Beginnings Many of the QCA units of work for these year groups are relevant to the theme of New Beginnings, for example: QCA Unit 1A Ourselves Children bring photographs to school showing their own growth from when they were first born to the present day. They place them in a personal photograph album and write sentences underneath each photograph describing how they have changed, such as what they could do, eat, say, what they felt at one day, one week, one year, and so on. QCA Unit 1B Growing plants Children take digital photographs of the process of planting seeds, looking after them and recording how they grow, from first shoots, through to fullygrown plants with flowers. QCA Unit 2B Plants and animals and the local environment Create a role-play area based on the Garden centre where children plant seeds, create labels, design and make seed packets, create instructions on how to grow plants, pot on their seedlings and eventually sell the plants, perhaps in aid of a class/group in a school in a developing country with whom they have an link. Getting on and Falling Out Activity 1 Objectives: Speaking and listening: To ensure everyone contributes, allocate tasks, consider alternatives and reach agreement Science: As for QCA Science Unit 2E section 5 Forces and movement This sequence of activities involves children in an experiment to investigate how different surfaces affect the distance a vehicle can travel. They speculate, then work in groups to design an experiment, conducting it and recording their results. An explicit part of the teaching sequence is to reflect on the different tasks completed by the group and how talk helped the group to function effectively. Other activities There are a number of QCA science units which also lend themselves to a

2 focus on group-work skills as follows. QCA Unit 1A section 7 Ourselves Children can find out who is the tallest person in the class, taking turns to measure each other using non-standard measurements, such as hand spans. QCA Unit 1B section 5 Growing plants Children investigate Which plant grows the tallest? They decide what to do, listening to each other s ideas, and agreeing what to do. They share jobs out so that everyone has something to do, and then take turns looking after their plants and measuring them. QCA Unit 1C section 8 Sorting and using materials The teacher tells children a story about a teddy who needs a new raincoat. They have to test different materials to find out which will be the best. They will need to think about what they have to do and listen to each other, make decisions, agree, and take turns in doing, measuring and recording. They could take photographs of each other, taking turns with a digital camera. QCA Unit 1F section 3 Sound and hearing Children create sound instruments, such as shakers and drums. They use their sound instruments to create sound effects for a story, nursery rhyme or poem. The children help each other when making the sound instruments and work together to make sound effects for their story. They take turns, make suggestions, listening to each other and making decisions about different sounds. QCA Unit 2D 7 Grouping and changing materials Children use a snowman concept cartoon which shows children thinking about whether they should put a coat on the snowman to stop it melting. They listen to each other s ideas and think about how to test how to keep an ice pop from melting. They share ideas and listen to each other, valuing what each person has to say. They make a group decision about how they should carry out their fair test, what equipment to use and who will do what. Going for goals In work on forces (QCA Unit 2E Forces and movement, section 5 Experimenting with toy cars) make links between physical factors that make the cars move faster, slower and change direction and the factors you have been discussing which make us move slower or faster or change direction when working towards our goals.

3 Good to be me In work on the senses (QCA Unit 1A) encourage children to think about sensory experiences that make them feel relaxed, and about which sense is used for example, when they sit by a warm fire, listen to music or stroke a pet. Relationships QCA Unit 1a Ourselves link with changes that children have to cope with as they are no longer the baby in the family and may feel jealous. See exemplar lesson plan for work on loss. Seal Objectives: To recognise and empathise with feelings associated with loss To support and help others when they are feeling a loss Science objectives: To know that all animals have needs To understand that we should look after animals in our care Linked unit of work QCA Unit 2A Plants and animals in the local environment Linked speaking and listening focuses - Y2: T1 Dr16: To adopt appropriate roles in a small or large group, and consider alternative courses of action Suggested activities Lesson 1 Part 1. Discuss with children their pets, what they are, their life cycle, what they need for example, housing, food, grooming; also ask children to share why they like their pets and any interesting stories they have about their pets. You could use a simple data handling or graphing package to create a chart showing the number of children who have dogs, cats and so on. Use the interactive whiteboard if you have one, and let each child enter some data. You may want to do a pre-computer activity, using pictures of their animals stuck on paper to create a bar chart. Part 2. Give children a booklet, a Pet Passport, in which children complete details about their pets, for example, drawing a picture of their pet, name, age, markings, what it eats, where it lives and other needs. Children who do not have their own pet could adopt an animal and find out information to help them complete their Pet Passport. Part 3. Ask children if they have ever had to take their pet to the vet and make a list of what they saw and what the vet did.

4 Discuss the idea of making a veterinary surgery in the class role-play area. Ask children what they think it should look like and what should go in there. Refer back to the list from the first part of the lesson. Ask children to bring things from home for the class veterinary surgery, for example, toy animals, animal baskets. Lesson 2 Having created the veterinary surgery in the classroom, allow children to use the area to role-play looking after animal patients. Discuss with children why animals are taken to the vet, ask them to consider what the animals might be feeling, for example, illness, pain, distress or fear, and how people need to treat animals in the surgery. Ask how the owners feel if their animals are ill, hurt and distressed, and how the people who work in the vet s surgery should treat the owners. Encourage children to explore these scenarios in the roleplay area. Changes See exemplar lesson plan, based on QCA scheme of work Unit 2A Health and growth. Many of the other QCA units of work for this age group are highly relevant to change: Unit 1A - Ourselves, section 6 Growing older: How have the children grown and developed? Unit 1B - Growing plants, section 5 Watering plants: Growing plants from seed, measuring and logging changes such as height, how many leaves, size of leaves, through drawings or by taking digital photographs, comparing changes when plants are grown under different conditions. Collect data about height and number of leaves over an appropriate period of time, and display this data in a variety of ways. Use a digital microscope with time delay setting to capture the growth of a plant or the opening of a flower. Unit 1F Sound and hearing, section 5 Body sounds and section 8 Loud sounds: Finding out what kind of sounds children can make using their bodies (e.g. voices, clapping, stamping) and how they can change these sounds; creating sound makers like shakers and finding out how they can change the sounds to be high or low, loud or quiet; finding out how we can stop sounds entering our ears, what materials we would use to make earmuffs, and how these change the sounds we hear. Record this data in a table or list.

5 Unit 2D Grouping and changing materials, section 4 Changing shape and section 7 Experimenting with melting ice: Allow children to explore different objects made of a range of materials they can change by applying forces (e.g. squeezing, pulling). Make an ice hand using rubber gloves. Ask the children to predict how they think the hand will change as it melts: for example, which part of the hand they think will change first or most over the next five minutes. Use cooking to show change in materials: cook not only cakes and biscuits but also pancakes, soup and bread. Include cold cooking such as fruit salads (watch bananas and apples go brown ask how we can stop this change) and milk shakes. Take digital photographs before and after to compare changes. Always make sure that children think about why the change has taken place. What did they do to make something change? SEAL objective: To understand natural developmental changes Science objectives: To know that animals, including ourselves, change as they grow To make simple comparisons between young animals and older animals, including humans Linked unit of work QCA Science Unit 2A Health and growth Linked speaking and listening focuses: Y2 T3 1: To use language and gesture to support the use of models/diagrams/displays when explaining Suggested activities Lesson 1 Part 1. Provide children with a range of pictures of different kinds of animals, at both young and adult stages of their life cycle. Include in this range animals such as sheep, frogs, elephants, snakes and butterflies. Ask children to look at them and match adult to baby and then, for each set of pictures, think about the similarities and differences between them. Challenge children to suggest which animal has changed the most from young to adult and explain their decision. Part 2. Using picture books, CD-ROM material or a website, present children with information about the life histories of different animals. Choose a range of animals, some that go through different stages and changes such as butterflies and frogs, and others whose changes are limited such as spiders, snakes and alligators. Allow each child to choose an animal and ask them to create one of the following:

6 a band for their hat or head, showing around the band how the animal changes as it gets older; a shadow puppet play telling the animal s life story and describing how it changes as it gets older; a strip cartoon of the animal s life story, possibly using presentation or multimedia software, either in groups or as a class on the interactive whiteboard. Children could work in pairs and decide which changes to show and talk about. Part 3. Provide children with an opportunity to show other children what they have created and to talk through the different changes that happen in the animal s life story. You could use the life cycle activities offered by some software packages (e.g. My World) and encourage children to put them in the correct order on the interactive whiteboard. Lesson 2 Part 1. Ask children to bring in photographs of themselves from being a baby to the present day. Make sure that they write their names on the back of the photographs so that if any get mixed up they can be returned to their owner. Give children time to look at each other s photographs and talk about how they have changed from being a baby to the present. Part 2. Give each child a photograph album; this might be made from A4 paper or card and have a space for each photograph and another space where they can write one or more sentences about how they have changed since the photograph on the previous page. Encourage children to write about the different changes and compare not only how they look, but also what they could and could not do at the different ages, their likes and dislikes, friends, games, clothes, and reflections on what they were like. Part 3. If the class runs a buddy system, then the buddies could swap albums and each look at what the buddy has produced. Otherwise allocate children a friend from their own or another class and allow children the opportunity to share their photograph albums with someone else. Lesson 3 Part 1. Talk to children about photograph albums and suggest that the class could create a Big Book Photograph Album about one animal. Have a class vote on which animal to choose and ask children to go home and find out as much as they can about the animal and bring the information, including pictures, back to school.

7 Part 2. Over a period of time, organise children to put what they have found out about their adopted animal into the class Big Book Photograph Album. Ensure that part of the album focuses on the changes that take place from birth to adulthood; include pictures and sentences about how the animal changes, what it can do for itself, and how the parent looks after it or doesn t. Discuss comparisons with their own life cycle and changes as they grew up with those of their adopted animal. Part 3. When the album is complete organise different groups of children to show the album to children in other classes in the school, or other groups of children in younger year groups.