Year 5

Keeping Healthy

This unit helps children to learn that there are many aspects to keeping healthy. Children learn about the heart and how heart beat is affected by exercise and relate this to what they already know about movement and exercise.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• repeating measurements
• representing data in bar charts and graphs, and interpreting these
• using results to draw conclusions.

Work in this unit also offers opportunities for children to find out how early scientific ideas about diet and health were tested. It helps them to use knowledge and understanding of science to explain and interpret phenomena related to their personal health.

Life Cycles

Through this unit children learn that plants and animals reproduce as part of their life cycle and that in every life cycle there are distinct processes and stages. They should begin to understand how reproduction is important to the survival of the species.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Making observations and comparisons
• Drawing conclusions.

Work in this unit also offers children opportunities to relate their knowledge and understanding of science to their personal health and to consider ways in which living things need protection.

Gases around Us

Through this unit children learn that gases are material and can be distinguished from solids and liquids by their properties. They also learn about the uses of some important gases and where gases are found.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Making and repeating observations
• Relating observations and conclusions to scientific knowledge and understanding.

Work in this unit also offers opportunities for children to use scientific knowledge and understanding to explain everyday phenomena related to air and other gases.

Changing State

Through this unit children consolidate their ideas about changes of state which can be reversed. They use their understanding to explain a range of familiar phenomena.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Making observations and measurements and presenting these
• Identifying patterns in results
• Suggesting explanations for observations and conclusions in terms of scientific knowledge and understanding.

Earth Sun and Moon

In this unit children learn about the shapes and relative sizes of the Earth, Sun and Moon. Using models they learn how the three bodies move relative to each other and how these movements relate to night and day.

Experimental and investigative work in this unit focuses on:

• Making observations and recognising patterns in first hand and secondary data
• Representing data in graphs.

Work in this unit offers opportunities for children to relate scientific knowledge and understanding to familiar phenomena e.g. day length, year length and to consider scientific evidence about the Earth, Sun and Moon.

Changing Sounds

Through this unit children learn that sounds are produced by vibrations and that these vibrations travel from the source through a variety of materials. Musical instruments are used to illustrate the range of ways of producing sounds and how pitch and loudness can be altered.

Experimental and investigative work focuses on:

• Turning ideas into a form that can be investigated and making predictions
• Deciding whether the evidence is sufficient to support the prediction.

Work in this unit also offers opportunities for children to use scientific knowledge and understanding about sound to explain familiar phenomena and to relate this to their understanding of musical instruments.