Science in the Foundation Stage

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Posted by dannynic | Posted in General Science, Resources | Posted on 29-09-2009

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Here are a few links to useful resources for teaching Science in the Foundation Stage.

Early Years Foundation Stage Website

Knowledge and Understanding of the World

Outdoor Play – The Unique Value of the Outside Environment – South Glos Council

What Do We Know About Teaching Young Children? – Tricia David

Growing Schools – support for using the outdoor classroom

Teaching Science in the Foundation Stage – AstraZeneca

Fostering Curiosity in Early Years Science – AstraZeneca

Science Day 2 – Sound – Photos

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Posted by Danny Nicholson | Posted in Physics | Posted on 25-09-2009

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A few photos from Scitt Science Day 2 – Sound. Quite a lot of fun was had making musical instruments from rubbish and then testing out string telephones.

More pics here.

Scitt Day 2 Scitt Day 2

Scitt Day 2 Scitt Day 2

Sound in a Vacuum

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Posted by Danny Nicholson | Posted in Physics | Posted on 24-09-2009

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Thanks James for sending me the link to this:

Sound cannot travel through a vacuum. Which explains this poster

Some more sounds links from past blog posts here:

Sound Infomation

Science and Music

And enjoy this Sound song

5F Sound Song from Simple Science on Vimeo.

Showing sounds on the Smartboard

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Posted by Danny Nicholson | Posted in ICT, Physics, Resources | Posted on 23-09-2009

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Here‘s a nice simple resource that could be used to teach Sound and Waves in Science. There are several sites that show oscilloscope traces when looking at sounds, and this is another one. It’s produced by Aartpack, and they call it a Digital Theramin – named after the staple musical instrument of 50s sci fi movies :)

oscilloscope

What I like about this one is its simplicity. Plus it would work well on an interactive whiteboard to show how the shape of the sound “wave” changes as the pitch and volume changes.

Click the Menu button to show the optionss, and set it so that the Sine Waveform is set to a value, and the other 3 are turned off (no scale), like this:

waveform

Then if you click anywhere on the screen, a sine wave will be drawn and a note will be played (turn up your speakers!)

If you drag your finger/pen to the right the note will get higher and the waves will get closer together. Likewise drag your finger/pen to the left and the pitch will get lower.

If you drag up the screen the note will get louder, drag it down the screen and the note will get quieter. The amplitude of the sine wave will reduce.

This would be very nice to demonstrate sound waves at KS2 or Ks3.

The only drawback is that there is no way to set it up so it works without having to touch the board. I’d like to have seen a mode where you could place a button on the screen, and move that button up/down left/right to change the note. That way you could let go of the board to address the class and keep the note playing/displayed. I’m pleased to see it will resize to full-screen so you can make the resource fit the entire whiteboard.

There are more complicated settings that you can play with if you want to do some more advanced stuff, but the sine wave feature alone makes it a very handy bookmark to have for your Sound lesson! You can access the digital theramin/oscilloscope here.

There are other interactive resources on the Aartpack website too. It’s worth looking around the whole site to see what they have for other subjects too.

Science by Email

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Posted by Danny Nicholson | Posted in General Science, ICT, Resources | Posted on 12-09-2009

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Science by Email looks like it could be a handy resource to keep an eye on:

“In recent years, Science by Email has produced a diverse range of science activities for subscribers to try at home or in the classroom. You can access them via this archive.”

You can also subscribe and have science ideas emailed direct to your inbox. The list is aimed at teachers in Australia, but anyone can join the mailing list.

Another service worth joining is Ictopus, which provides a weekly email of useful lesson ideas for Primary Teachers, for all subjects. It’s free to register, and you get access to the entire archive of past resources.

http://www.ictopus.org.uk/

They Might be Scientists

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Posted by Danny Nicholson | Posted in General Science, ICT | Posted on 11-09-2009

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Following on from a post on the Whiteboard Blog a few weeks back about Here Comes Science – the CD of Science songs from the band They Might be Giants, here’s another song from the CD. (via @BadAstronomer).

The song is called “Science is Real” and it would a good introduction to Science, or a good way to start off a discussion on scientific thinking

The CD is available from Amazon.com (and Amazon UK on import)