CLASS 2 SCIENCE CURRICULUM: WORKING SCIENTIFICALLY
Activities/Opportunities
Across all year groups scientific knowledge and skills should be learned by working scientifically.
Learning
Performance Milestones
Objectives
Lower KS2
To work
scientifically
Upper KS2
• Ask relevant questions. • Set up simple practical enquiries and comparative and fair tests. • Make accurate measurements using standard units, using a range of equipment, e.g. thermometers and data loggers. • Gather, record, classify and present data in a variety of ways to help in answering questions. • Record findings using simple scientific language, drawings, labelled diagrams, bar charts and tables. • Report on findings from enquiries, including oral and written explanations, displays or presentations of results and conclusions. • Use results to draw simple conclusions and suggest improvements, new questions and predictions for setting up further tests. • Identify differences, similarities or changes related to simple, scientific ideas and processes.
• Use straightforward, scientific evidence to answer questions or to support their findings. • Plan enquiries, including recognising and controlling variables where necessary. • Use appropriate techniques, apparatus, and materials during fieldwork and laboratory work. • Take measurements, using a range of scientific equipment, with increasing accuracy and precision. • Record data and results of increasing complexity using scientific diagrams and labels, classification keys, tables, bar and line graphs, and models. • Report findings from enquiries, including oral and written explanations of results, explanations involving causal relationships, and conclusions. • Present findings in written form, displays and other presentations. • Use test results to make predictions to set up further comparative and fair tests. • Use simple models to describe scientific ideas, identifying scientific evidence that has been used to support or refute ideas or arguments. BIOLOGY
Activities/Opportunities
Plants
• Look at the function of parts of flowering plants, requirements of growth, water
transportation in plants, life cycles and seed dispersal.
Evolution and inheritance
• Look at resemblance in offspring.
• Look at changes in animals over time.
• Look at adaptation to environments.
• Look at differences in offspring.
• Look at adaptation and evolution.
• Look at changes to the human skeleton over time.
Animals and humans
• Look at nutrition, transportation of water and nutrients in the body, and the muscle and
skeleton system of humans and animals.
• Look at the digestive system in humans.
• Look at teeth.
• Look at the human circulatory system.
All living things
• Identify and name plants and animals
• Look at classification keys.
• Look at the life cycle of animals and plants.
• Look at classification of plants, animals and micro-organisms.
• Look at reproduction in plants and animals, and human growth and changes.
• Look at the effect of diet, exercise and drugs.
Learning
Performance Milestones
Objectives
To understand
plants
To understand
animals and
humans
Lower KS2
Upper KS2
• Identify and describe the functions of
• Relate knowledge of plants to studies of
different parts of flowering plants: roots, stem, evolution and inheritance.
leaves and flowers.
• Relate knowledge of plants to studies of all
• Explore the requirements of plants for life
living things.
and growth (air, light, water, nutrients from
soil, and room to grow) and how they vary
from plant to plant.
• Investigate the way in which water is
transported within plants.
• Explore the role of flowers in the life cycle
of flowering plants, including pollination,
seed formation and seed dispersal.
Identify that animals, including humans, need
• Identify and name the main parts of the
the right types and amounts of nutrition, that
human circulatory system, and explain the
functions of the heart, blood vessels and
they cannot make their own food and they get
nutrition from what they eat.
blood (including the pulse and clotting).
• Describe the ways in which nutrients and
water are transported within animals, including
humans.
• Identify that humans and some animals
have skeletons and muscles for support,
protection and movement.
• Describe the simple functions of the basic
parts of the digestive system in humans.
• Identify the different types of teeth in
humans and their simple functions.
To investigate
living things
Identify and name a variety of living things
(plants and animals) in the local and wider
environment, using classification keys to
assign them to groups.
• Give reasons for classifying plants and
animals based on specific characteristics.
• Recognise that environments are constantly
changing and that this can sometimes pose
dangers to specific habitats.
• Describe the life cycles common to a variety
of animals, including humans (birth, growth,
development, reproduction, death), and to a
variety of plants (growth, reproduction and
death).
• Explain the classification of living things into
broad groups according to common,
observable characteristics and based on
similarities and differences, including plants,
animals and micro-organisms.
• Describe the life process of reproduction in
some plants and animals.
• Describe the changes as humans develop from
birth to old age.
• Recognise the impact of diet, exercise, drugs
and lifestyle on the way human bodies function.
To understand
evolution and
inheritance
Identify how plants and animals, including
humans, resemble their parents in many
features.
• Recognise that living things have changed
over time and that fossils provide information
about living things that inhabited the Earth
millions of years ago.
• Identify how animals and plants are suited to
and adapt to their environment in different
ways.
• Recognise that living things produce offspring
of the same kind, but normally offspring vary
and are not identical to their parents.
• Describe how adaptation leads to evolution.
• Recognise how and why the human skeleton
has changed over time, since we separated from
other primates.
CHEMISTRY
Activities/Opportunities
Rocks and fossils
• Compare and group rocks and describe the formation of fossils.
States of matter
• Look at solids, liquids and gases, changes of state, evaporation, condensation and the water cycle.
Materials
• Examine the properties of materials using various tests.
• Look at solubility and recovering dissolved substances.
• Separate mixtures.
• Examine changes to materials that create new materials that are usually not reversible.
Learning
Performance Milestones
Objectives
To investigate
materials
Lower KS2
Upper KS2
• Compare and group together
• Compare and group together different kinds
everyday materials based on evidence from
of rocks on the basis of their simple,
comparative and fair tests, including their
physical properties.
• Relate the simple physical properties of some hardness, solubility, conductivity (electrical and
rocks to their formation (igneous or
thermal), and response to magnets.
• Understand how some materials will dissolve
sedimentary).
in liquid to form a solution and describe how
• Describe in simple terms how fossils are
to recover a substance from a solution.
formed when things that have lived are
• Use knowledge of solids, liquids and gases
trapped within sedimentary rock.
to decide how mixtures might be
• Compare and group materials together,
separated, including through filtering, sieving
according
and evaporating.
to whether they are solids, liquids or gases.
• Give reasons, based on evidence
• Observe that some materials change state
from comparative and fair tests, for the
when they are heated or cooled, and measure
the temperature at which this happens in
particular uses of everyday materials, including
degrees Celsius (°C), building on their teaching metals, wood and plastic.
• Demonstrate that dissolving, mixing
in mathematics.
and changes of state are reversible changes.
• Identify the part played by evaporation
• Explain that some changes result in
and condensation in the water cycle and
the formation of new materials, and that this
associate the rate of evaporation with
kind of change is not usually reversible,
temperature.
including changes associated with burning,
oxidisation and the action of acid on bicarbonate
of soda.
PHYSICS
Activities/Opportunities
Light
• Look at sources, seeing, reflections and shadows.
• Explain how light appears to travel in straight lines and how this affects seeing and shadows.
Sound
• Look at sources, vibration, volume and pitch.
Electricity
• Look at appliances, circuits, lamps, switches, insulators and conductors.
• Look at circuits, the effect of the voltage in cells and the resistance and conductivity of materials.
Forces and magnets
• Look at contact and distant forces, attraction and repulsion, comparing and grouping materials.
• Look at poles, attraction and repulsion.
• Look at the effect of gravity and drag forces.
• Look at transference of forces in gears, pulleys, levers and springs.
Earth and space
• Look at the movement of the Earth and the Moon
 Explain day and night
Learning
Objectives
To understand
movement,
forces and
magnets
To understand
light and
seeing
To investigate
sound and
hearing
To understand
electrical
circuits
To understand
the Earth’s
movement in
space
Performance Milestone
Lower KS2
Upper KS
• Notice that some forces need contact
• Describe magnets as having two poles.
between two objects and some forces act at a
• Predict whether two magnets will attract or
distance.
repel each other, depending on which poles are
• Observe how magnets attract or repel each
facing.
other and attract some materials and not
• Explain that unsupported objects fall towards
others.
the Earth because of the force of gravity
• Compare and group together a variety of
acting between the Earth and the falling object.
everyday materials on the basis of whether they
• Identify the effect of drag forces, such as
are attracted to a magnet and identify some
air resistance, water resistance and friction that
magnetic materials.
act between moving surfaces.
• Describe, in terms of drag forces, why
moving objects that are not driven tend to slow
down.
• Understand that force and motion can
be transferred through mechanical devices such
as gears, pulleys, levers and springs.
Notice that light is reflected from surfaces.
• Understand that light appears to travel in
• Associate shadows with a light source
straight lines.
being blocked by something; find patterns that
• Use the idea that light travels in straight lines
determine the size of shadows.
to explain that objects are seen because they
give out or reflect light into the eyes.
• Use the idea that light travels in straight lines
to explain why shadows have the same shape as
the objects that cast them, and to predict the
size of shadows when the position of the light
source changes.
Identify how sounds are made, associating
• Find patterns between the pitch of a sound and
features of the object that produced it.
some of them with something vibrating.
• Recognise that sounds get fainter as the
• Find patterns between the volume of a sound
distance from the sound’s source increases.
and the strength of the vibrations that produced
it.
Identify whether or not a lamp will light in a
• Identify and name the basic parts of a simple
simple series circuit based on whether or not the electrical circuit, including cells, wires, bulbs,
lamp is part of a complete loop with a battery.
switches and buzzers.
• Recognise that a switch opens and closes a
• Associate the brightness of a lamp or the
circuit and associate this with whether or not a
volume of a buzzer with the number and voltage
lamp lights in a simple series circuit.
of cells used in the circuit.
• Recognise some common conductors
• Compare and give reasons for variations in
and insulators and associate metals with being
how components function, including the
good conductors.
brightness of bulbs, the loudness of buzzers and
the on/off position of switches.
• Describe the movement of the Earth relative
• Describe the Sun, Earth and Moon as
to the Sun in the solar system.
approximately spherical bodies.
• Describe the movement of the Moon relative
• Use the idea of the Earth’s rotation to explain
to the Earth.
day and night.
CHARACTERISTICS
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The ability to think independently and raise questions about working scientifically and the knowledge and
skills that it brings.
Confidence and competence in the full range of practical skills, taking the initiative in, for example, planning
and carrying out scientific investigations.
Excellent scientific knowledge and understanding which is demonstrated in written and verbal explanations,
solving challenging problems and reporting scientific findings.
High levels of originality, imagination or innovation in the application of skills.
The ability to undertake practical work in a variety of contexts, including fieldwork.
A passion for science and its application in past, present and future technologies.