Year 3

Teeth and Eating

Work in this unit reinforces and develops children’s knowledge of their personal health and how this relates to diet.  They learn about how teeth are related to diet and the importance of dental care.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Deciding what evidence to collect
• Deciding whether evidence is sufficient to support conclusions.

Work also offers opportunities for children to relate understanding of science to their personal health.

Helping Plants Grow

In this unit children learn about what plants need to grow well and why it is important that they do.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Considering what evidence should be collected
• Making careful measurements
• Considering how good the evidence is
• Using results to draw conclusions.

Work in this unit also offers opportunities for children to relate their knowledge about the growth of plants to everyday contexts.

Characteristics of Materials

Through this unit children extend their knowledge of the range of materials we use and of the properties that characterise them. This knowledge should help them recognise what needs to be considered when a material is chosen for a particular use.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Planning investigations
• Deciding what to change, what to keep the same and what to measure
• Deciding whether a fair comparison was made
• Using results to draw conclusions.

Work in this unit also offers opportunities for children to relate science to materials they use every day, to obtain evidence to test ideas, and to identify hazards and risks as they work.

Rocks and Soils

Through this unit children come to recognise that underneath all surfaces is rock which they may not be able to see, that rocks get broken down into pebbles and soils which we can often see, and that there are different sorts of rock with different characteristics. Pebbles and soils from different rocks consequently have different characteristics.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Considering whether a test is fair
• Measuring volumes of liquids using appropriate apparatus
• Making comparisons
• Drawing and suggesting explanations for conclusions.

Work in this unit also offers opportunities for children to use their understanding of science to explain observations about rocks and soils, for children to collect evidence to test ideas, and to recognise hazards and risks

Magnets and Springs

This unit gives children experience of forces, including attraction and repulsion between magnets, compression and stretching of springs and stretching of elastic bands. They learn that these forces have direction and can vary in size. They also learn which materials are attracted to magnets.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Making simple predictions
• Planning what evidence to collect
• Interpreting evidence and using it to draw conclusions.

Work in this unit also offers many opportunities to relate science to everyday things e.g. magnets for toys and household appliances, and to discuss sorting materials for recycling.

Light and Shadows

This unit introduces the relationship between light, an object and the formation of shadows. Children observe the apparent movement of the Sun and the associated changes in shadows.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Making and recording measurements and observations
• Drawing conclusions
• Suggesting explanations for observations and conclusions.

Work in this unit also offers children opportunities to explain shadows using scientific knowledge and to recognise the hazards and risks in looking at the Sun.