Understanding about science
Appreciate that science is a way of explaining the world and that science knowledge changes over time.
Identify ways in which scientists work together and provide evidence to support their ideas.
Investigating in science
Build on prior experiences, working together to share and examine their own and others’ knowledge.
Ask questions, find evidence, explore simple models, and carry out appropriate investigations to develop simple explanations.
Communicating in science
Begin to use a range of scientific symbols, conventions, and vocabulary.
Engage with a range of science texts and begin to question the purposes for which these texts are constructed.
Participating and contributing
Use their growing science knowledge when considering issues of concern to them.
Explore various aspects of an issue and make decisions about possible actions.
Life processes
Recognise that there are life processes common to all living things and that these occur in different ways.
Ecology
Explain how living things are suited to their particular habitat and how they respond to environmental changes, both natural and human-induced.
Evolution
Begin to group plants, animals, and other living things into science-based classifications.
Explore how the groups of living things we have in the world have changed over long periods of time and appreciate that some living things in New Zealand are quite different from living things in other areas of the world.
Links:
Earth systems
Develop an understanding that water, air, rocks and soil, and life forms make up our planet and recognise that these are also Earth’s resources.
Interacting systems
Investigate the water cycle and its effect on climate, landforms, and life.
Astronomical systems
Investigate the components of the solar system, developing an appreciation of the distances between them.
Links
Physical inquiry and physics concepts
Explore, describe, and represent patterns and trends for everyday examples of physical phenomena, such as movement, forces, electricity and magnetism, light, sound, waves, and heat. For example, identify and describe the effect of forces (contact and non-contact) on the motion of objects; identify and describe everyday examples of sources of energy, forms of energy, and energy transformations.
Links
Properties and changes of matter
Group materials in different ways, based on the observations and measurements of the characteristic chemical and physical properties of a range of different materials.
Compare chemical and physical changes.
The structure of matter
Begin to develop an understanding of the particle nature of matter and use this to explain observed changes.
Chemistry and society
Relate the observed, characteristic chemical and physical properties of a range of different materials to technological uses and natural processes.
Links
The codes for the four contextual strands are:
L — Making Sense of the Living World
P — Making Sense of the Physical World
M — Making Sense of the Material World
E — Making Sense of Planet Earth and Beyond.