Science
Science Long Term Overview (download link)
Please view our Science Curriculum Progression of Skills and Knowledge here:
WJS Curriculum Progression – Science (download link)
Science Week 2024
This year’s Science Week theme is ‘Time’. On Monday, every class participated in the great Plastic Count, logging our plastic recyclables and non- recyclables over the week to enter into a national database of plastic waste. On Tuesday, children across the federation worked together to complete science themed activities: Year 3 buddied up with Year 2 to complete a dinosaur timeline, Year 4 met up with Year 1 and explored how moths have adapted over time to allow themselves to be camouflaged in urban environments and Year 5 and Reception went on a colourful nature walk looking at the seasonal changes to plants. On Wednesday and Thursday, each class chose from a range of activities, including: Nature’s Future (exploring what Earth might look like in the future), a sundial investigation, designing a farm of the future or researching how science communication or electricity has changed over time. On Friday, we created letters and future aspirations to go in our federation time capsule. We finished off the week with sharing our learning across the year groups.
Science Week 2023
This year, the theme for British Science Week 2023 is ‘Connections’. Our world is full of connections – connections in our bodies, with other people and with other countries. Also, connections can be made between all STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths). That’s what makes it such a wonderful topic for this year’s British Science Week!
With this in mind, Miss Porter and I have planned a special week with included learning about an inspirational Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He was famous for his pioneering work designing Britain’s railways, bridges, tunnels, viaducts and passenger ships. Year 3 and 4 used Chatterpix and Year 5 and 6 used Adobe Spark to present their research about Brunel.
Brunel inspires our next activity to work in groups using paper and cello tape to design a bridge. Once the group designed the bridge, we tested it to see how much weight it will hold. Three bridges in 3DT held 8kg!
We played a game of ‘Broken Phone’ to send a message around the school. This shows us all the different ways we can connect with others e.g. Morse code, Scratch program, letter, message in a bottle and remote-controlled cars.
Finally, we went outdoors to select a tree on our school grounds to collect data on. They found out the type of tree, the number of insects living on the tree, measure the trunk, used a stethoscope to listen to the tree and recorded what they heard.
We managed to pack so much scientific learning into this week and identify the range of connections within our world.
Science Week 2022
Every class has completed a number of different activities around a central theme of growth. Tasks and challenges have included planting their own vegetables (cress, spring onions, peas and carrots), exploring how to create health soil discovering different things that live in or around the trees on our school, grounds and building nests with ‘beaks’ like penguins!
Most exciting of all has to be that the children have all had the opportunity to enter our garden design competition.
There is no doubt that the children have thoroughly enjoyed their growth themed fun and it is crystal clear that there are some super science stars of the future at our school!
Science Week 2021
During National Science week, Westfields Junior School focused on how to create a sustainable planet. We looked at the causes and effects of global warming, pollution by littering as well as recycling and reusing items. We finished the week by designing a school for the future using the ideas generated by the week’s investigation.
Science Week 2020
This week, we have been celebrating British Science Week with a range of themed activities based on ‘Our Diverse Planet’. The week started with a special assembly, explaining that our planet is made up of a magnificent range of animals, plants, habitats and biomes. During the afternoon, each year group researched and created fact files on different animal groups: Year 3 – Animals with stripes; Year 4 – Animals that swim; Year 5 – Animals which fly; Year 6 – Animals with super senses. On Tuesday afternoon, each class worked with their buddy classes to produce work based on different biomes and habitats. Years 4 and 6 investigated cold climates and Years 3 and 5 hot climates. The range of activities included making Kahoot quizzes, Chatterpix animations, shoe box model habitats, posters and lots more! Wednesday was a day of investigations…Year 3 studied animal footprints; they left out flour overnight to see what animal tracks would be made. Lots of excitement ensued with the discover of squirrel and fox prints. Year 4 investigated how to keep warm in the cold by testing insulation materials using data loggers. Year 5 completed a flight investigation to prove if wingspan causes a longer glide. They created paper spinners to investigate cause and effect of wind span against flight time. And finally, Year 6 looked at how the eye works by investigating lots of optical illusions. On Thursday, we worked in our house teams to create a display of our investigations and findings from the week. We made posters which included images, results, data recordings, graphs and charts. These were presented to the whole school on Friday afternoon in our Science Showcase — what a wonderful week! Well done to all of the children and staff who embraced these exciting learning opportunities so enthusiastically!
Mr Chaplin, Year 5 Team Leader
Science Week 2019
This year’s Science Week has centred around the theme of ‘Journeys’. The classes across the school began their own expedition by exploring some famous journeys from history. These included researching Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe, Shackleton’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition and even Yuri Gagarin’s journey to Space! Throughout the week, the children have enjoyed an array of scientific tasks, activities and investigations. From investigating circuits and strong structures to classification of rocks and adaptations of living creatures, all of the classes have enjoyed the hands on experiences they have shared. This afternoon, we shared an assembly to celebrate all we have achieved which was wonderful to see. We will also be collating some of our work and displaying it in school and on the website, so keep your eyes peeled!