Keeping Cool

Science in Year 5 has been all about the properties of materials. Using touch, they have described unseen items, compared their hardness as well as their magnetic properties.

In order to further their understanding of whether a material is suitable as an insulator, a full investigation was in order.
Prior to getting hands on, there was a fantastically detailed discussion about fair testing and how the investigation needed to be carried out, so the results would be reliable. For the investigation, the children covered containers containing ice cubes with different materials and measured how the temperature inside changed over time.

However afterwards, the results of two of the containers were judged unreliable – the temperature in one was recorded as just 3°C! So this prompted another scientific discussion allowing all opinions to be heard, thinking about what made the results unreliable and what needed to be changed. This resulted in a repeat of the investigation and this time the results were felt to be somewhat more trustworthy, though not completely conclusive.

Overall, it was a useful example of how careful we must be when carrying out an investigation and allowed an opportunity to develop use of scientific vocabulary regarding carrying out experiments and terminology surrounding materials and their properties.