What does Science look like at Dale Hall?
Science Education at Dale Hall is all about developing an understanding of and making sense of our environment, primarily through experience, exploration and interaction with scientific phenomena.
The purpose of gaining this understanding is to enable pupils to take responsibility for their role in the maintenance of a healthy life and the creation of a safe environment; not only for the benefit of themselves but also for fellow human beings, animals and plants in our world.
Working scientifically extends and enhances a child’s natural curiosity and we encourage children to ask scientific questions about the world around them. Children are given opportunities to predict, observe, record and draw conclusions in experiments and investigations to nurture their natural inquisitiveness.
We love learning scientifically here!
Mrs Ross
Science KS1 topic coverage and progression Science.docx (1).pdf
Science LKS2 Topic coverage and skills progression.docx (1).pdf
Ways to support your child with science
- Value your child’s questions. Enjoy talking about their questions and encourage them to share their observations and perspectives.
- Explore and find the answers together.
- Give your child time and space to explore. Children learn through trial and error, wait before giving them the “correct” answers. Finding out by themselves is much more memorable.
- Accept that explorations can be messy! Children love getting stuck in and more often than not this can mean getting messy. Dress them in old clothes and tell them it’s ok to get dirty.
- Learn from mistakes together. If things go wrong take advantage of this and refining your ideas and make new hypotheses.
- Invite curiosity. Remember science is all around us, you just have to ask about it to find out.
- Support further exploration. Follow up on their interests by expanding their knowledge. Visiting the library or a museum are great places to start.
- Encourage your child to record their observations. Writing, drawing or taking photos are all ways to record observations. You could offer to write things down for them if they are reluctant to do so themselves.
- Make good use of your electronic devices. Take photos, record sounds, use a website or app to learn more about a specific phenomenon or creature.
- Use items you have at home to experiment and explore. You don’t need to spend lots of money on science supplies. There are lots of things in your cupboards at home that could be used to support your child’s learning.
Mrs Ross
Science Lead
Science is a natural part of learning. I love to nuture children's curiosity and challenge their scientific thinking. With a child led approach, the Science curriculum at Dale Hall engages, motivates and challenges, linking well to our stories in the Power of Reading too. Science is a fun a exciting subject to teach and the children love how practical it can be - finding the answers to questions themselves. I hope to continue to nurture this ethos across the school.
Science at home
Have you ever wanted to make your own lava lamp or volcano? Make an orange fizzy? Create a storm in a glass? Make snow fluff? Go snow fishing? Make your own expanding soap?
If you fancy having a go at any of these experiments or more please click on the link below:
https://www.sciencefun.org/kidszone/experiments/ and visit the Science Fun for everyone website.
I would love to see what you get up to, please share photos with your teacher on Dojo and mention me.
We are exploring “Light” this half term. We have been finding out about how we see, seeing colours, reflecting light, refraction and shadows. We have loved experimenting and investigating our own ideas.
We are going to be finding out all about Space! We are going to be learning about the planets within our solar system, how they travel, how the concepts of night and day work and to sequence moments of historical significance within the field of space exploration and study.
We are going to be finding out how environments can change and that this can sometimes pose dangers to living things. To enhance our topic learning we are going to be planning our own mummification experiments.
We are thinking about “Animals and humans.” We have been finding out about healthy eating and what we need to make our body grow. We have been investigating the human skeleton, finding out what we need it for and how our one is similar to other animals.
Our focus this half term is “Animals and their habitats.” We are looking at a selection of different habitats around the world through our Power of Reading book and finding out about the animals which live there and how they are suited to these environments.
We are going to be identifying and exploring living things in our environment. We will be finding out about insects, animals and plants. The children will be finding out about the different parts of a flowering plant. They will be exploring and comparing the differences between living and dead things. They will continue to observe the changes in the seasons by looking closely at the weather.
A lot of our science learning takes place in different areas of our provision and our adults build on our experiences by asking us questions. We are going to be busy in our garden making close observations of it and looking after the plants we are planting. We are very excited to be going on a trip to the farm where we can compare our environments.