Sept. 26, 2023
Don't panic - Purple Mash has got some useful tools for you in its Science Leader's Toolkit. The toolkit is there to support you throughout your role, whether you've just started this year, or have years of experience. It aims to save you precious time and ultimately help you establish excellence in science within your school.
Included in the toolkit, you'll find:
One of the key strands of the National Curriculum, which is woven through students' time at primary school, is 'Working Scientifically'. This includes developing skills such as questioning, observation, identifying and classifying, gathering and recording data and performing tests and investigations. Within Purple Mash, there is a Fair Test template and a Comparative Test template.
The comparative test template includes definitions of key terms which children should include, as well as sentence starters to help with their writing. These can be edited within Teacher View, and can be added to the 'Think about' section of the Fair Test template if needed. This helps to provide scaffolding for any children who may need it.
The Plants strand is studied in Years 1, 2 and 3 and is great to do in the Spring or Summer months in order to grow plants with your students. You may want them to focus on their observational skills and complete a Plant Diary. They could then describe how plants grow with the Growing Plants template. Older children might be writing about seed dispersal or the adaptation of plants. As well as writing templates, there are interactive activities and quizzes to develop children's learning. They can label plants, and label the parts of a flower, classify plants, and complete quizzes on evergreen and deciduous trees.
You'll also find the non-fiction text by DK Learning, The Lifespan of a Plant, useful for teaching this topic.
This topic is taught in all Primary year groups. Students might name and classify animals, learn all about the different parts of the body, learn about human development and look at food chains. The Purple Mash folder on The Human Body is full of helpful resources to teach about muscles, the skeleton, the digestive system, teeth and more. Children might use some resources in the Animals folder to explore animal needs and what they eat, and older year groups might be ready to classify animals.
For a great end-of-lesson or end-of-unit task, why not try one of the quizzes?
This topic is taught in Years 1, 2, 4 and 5, and is a great topic for investigation work. There are some experiments within Purple Mash for students to work through:
Pupils can also write about magnets; solids, liquids and gases; irreversible changes and reversible changes. They could even create an animation - check out the example animation of playdough being squashed.
If your school doesn't currently subscribe to Purple Mash, you can get a free trial here.
In Year 1, children learn about the seasons and then discover more about how seasons occur in Year 5 when learning about Earth and Space. On Purple Mash, there are activities to suit both age groups to ensure they reach the National Curriculum objectives.
For Year 1:
For Year 5:
Pupils in Years 2, 4 and 5 will study this topic which focuses on identifying, comparing, grouping and classifying living things. Any life cycle resources can be found in the Change Science folder on Purple Mash, and there is also a whole folder for habitats resources, including a DK Learning text, All About Animal Habitats, complete with corresponding resources.
Rocks, soils and fossils are all taught in this unit in Year 3. Pupils will learn and be able to write about the different types of rocks and their properties. They will also learn about how fossils are created, and could create a leaflet about the stages of fossilisation. Pupils can research more about fossils using the DK Learning text, What Can We Learn About Fossils?, and then complete the quiz. There are also other quizzes and printable resources for them to use.
If researching a scientist within this topic, then Mary Anning is the perfect choice! Students can create their own fact file about Mary Anning on Purple Mash. All of these resources are included in a subscription to Purple Mash - if you're not a subscriber, you can give it a go with a free trial.
Light is a topic that is taught in Years 3 and 6, and sound is taught in year 4. Children beginning to learn about light in year 3 should identify light sources and can draw arrows to show how light helps us see. When learning about sound, students can label the parts of the human ear, and conduct a sound experiment.
This topic is taught in Years 3 and 5, and there are lots of different activities on Purple Mash for children to get involved in:
For year 3:
For year 5:
In both Years 4 and 6, children will learn about electricity, including electrical safety, how a bulb works in a circuit, and components and symbols for circuits. Children in Year 6 may go on to create series circuits. On Purple Mash, there is an investigation you might like to do with your class, investigating conductors and insulators.
When you have finished teaching your topic, you might want to check how much your students have remembered with the electricity quiz and electrical symbols pairs game.
Pupils in Year 6 will build on the knowledge about fossils that they gained in Year 3, and will discover how living things have changed over time. Charles Darwin features heavily in this unit of work, and students can write a fact file about him on Purple Mash, as well as creating an interview with him. They could even write a postcard from the Galapagos Islands, talking about his discoveries and theories. Children can write about the adaptation of animals and the evolution of humans.
There are also quizzes and cloze activities to choose from, as an end-of-unit knowledge check.
If you want to try any of the resources listed above, you can get a free trial and see how much time Purple Mash can save you!
Lots of schools teach RSE as part of their Science curriculum. Why not try our comprehensive RSE scheme of work, Dot Com Digital? It not only covers the physical changes of growing older, but tackles difficult mental health issues as well as emerging threats including knife crime, county lines and grooming, ensuring that older children have the tools they need for moving safely into secondary school.
