Whole lesson Year 3. Meets National Curriculum Objective: compare and group together different kinds of rocks on the basis of their appearance and simple physical properties. This lesson has been prepared as an exciting practical start to the topic of rocks and soils - ideal for the first lesson in a unit of work. This resource pack includes: Lesson plan Lesson presentation Printed activity/recording sheet Printed learning objective Rock name labels (editable) Name that rock printout - (identification chart) for help identifying the rock as an alternative to pre-labelling. Children are given an input based on properties of different materials and are then asked to consider the properties of different rocks, by examining them. After that they decide how to sort/group them, based on the properties they have just observed. I’ve delivered this lesson for two years without the slide show and the printouts, and I know it will be better for it - the children always enjoy it, regardless - and it enthuses them for the rest for the topic - this is simply tightening/smartening up. Tip: If you are spending the whole afternoon on the activity, use setting circles/hoops and encourage children to create physical Venn diagrams with the rock samples, according to their own sorting criteria written onto post-it notes (as in the last slides of the slide show). Please note: you will need access to rock samples to deliver this lesson - I have left editable boxes on the rock labels, as well as including the most likely to be used rocks. (I selected 7 types that could be gathered together fairly easily) I hope you enjoy using this resource. I would be grateful if you could leave a review.

A pick-up-and-go lesson covering the Year 3 National Curriculum objective, compare and contrast the diets of different animals including pets. This presentation includes vivid images of different animals alongside their diets in general terms. It prompts children to think about what their own pets eat, or mustn’t have and links to a BBC classroom clip. I have used this lesson in Year 3, and the children were exceptionally engaged. The activity creates an imaginary scenario, where there is a new zoo keeper who has lost her notes explaining which bucket of food is to be taken to which enclosure. Children help by matching the menu with the enclosure. This resource includes: lesson plan, activity, lesson presentation, and printed L.O. Tip: Print the activity on the ‘two sides per sheet’ setting to fit into books nicely without wasting too much paper and ink, leaving space for additional writing below. I hope you enjoy using this resource. I would be grateful if you could leave a review once it has been used in class.

A simple resource, children can use when investigating different types of rocks. Using a grid, children can state whether they think a specific rock is e.g. smooth or gritty, layers or no layers, crystals or no crystals. This is a taster, part of a collection of resources based on the Year 3 topic of Rocks and Soils available at: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/rocks-year-3-11910312 I hope you enjoy using this resource.

Year 4 - Changing States of Matter Practical lesson - used as a hook following Christmas start of new topic - link to food waste - ways to preserve. This is a whole lesson where children make butter by shaking double cream in jars until it first becomes whipped cream and then butter. I prepared it to use in the first week back as a lesson to engage before moving on to solids, liquids and gases. It is an easy and fun practical lesson. This resource comes with a lesson plan, a learning objective table/slip where children are encouraged to link their task to the forthcoming learning by answering two questions about how the liquid cream was different from the solid butter, and a power point presentation - my first slides relate to food waste at Christmas, but this could be easily edited to link to food waste more generally. You will need to provide: several tubs of double cream, jars or lidded plastic tubs to use as shakers, salt, spoons, crackers. I hope you enjoy using this resource and if you could take the time to feed back, I would be grateful.

A ppt to help children identify a sample of 8 rocks/minerals based on their properties. The rocks included are: flint, sandstone, feldspar granite, quartzite, slate, diorite, chalk and galena - but they could be edited to suit the rocks you have available. I would print out the first slide for the table groups, large, and print out the information 2 slides per sheet to accompany the rock samples. Children can physically place their rock samples on the correct rock pictured. This activity would accompany a lesson where children have to sort rocks based on their appearance and properties. https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/compare-and-group-different-kinds-of-rocks-11910312 I would ask children to read the information sheet - if it says it’s a hard rock, they can perform the scratch test and see for themselves if this is true. If it says it is permeable, they can place sample in a beaker of water and look out for bubbles forming on the rock etc. **Note: **Our rock sample kit contained galena already - I have researched carefully, and it is not considered a risk to handle, but I have taken the precaution of asking children not to perform the scratch test on this mineral. (Just in case you were wondering!) I hope this activity is of some help. :-)

This is a resource I created to be able to take the Year 3s beach combing/fossil hunting on a shingle beach on the SE coast. Whilst our beach does have some amazing fossils, the area was deemed too unsafe to go to, as access is tough and the cliffs are unstable, so instead I needed to research what the children were most likely to be able to find on a typical shingle beach (flint and chert) away from the cliffs. I have chosen to introduce only what I suspect the children might have luck in finding, and also included some information about quartz in pebbles (geodes), as these can be found. We will tie it in with a visit to a local museum to see and handle some real fossils, and it should make for a nice summer outing. This ppt is meant to be able to be used as an introduction, prior to a beach hunt (ideally with your own examples gathered in a pre-visit) Children will ideally receive instruction before or after on the formation of fossils. When I use it, I will take care to ensure the children know that we are relying on speculation, assumption and deduction, and all fossils would really require expert identification to be sure what they actually are. The ppt is not long, but does represent hours of painstaking research! It’s so hard to wade through the higher brow guides to get to the basics. I’ve included a .pdf that can be used as a guide in situ. I hope you will find it useful. If you like this resource you may also like my resources on comparing and sorting different rock types. https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/compare-and-group-different-kinds-of-rocks-11910312 or Rock Identification (free) https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/what-s-my-rock-or-mineral-11912410

This is a ppt presentation I have adapted from 2 different free resources downloaded from TES so as to be suitable for primary school aged children. Although not strictly in the National Curriculum at this level, I used it as part of a couple of lessons supporting the LO: Identify how the habitat changes throughout the year, in year 4, as once we had had the initial practice drawing scientific diagrams in the classroom, I could take them into their local habitat, and they could use this skill amongst others, such as identifying creatures/plants in their habitats and photo records etc. I used this in class with a number of objects, such as beautiful feathers, pine cones, geodes, a live spider, and some preserved insects in perspex. Some of the children drew an artistic sketch alongside it in their artists sketchbooks, in 2B pencil to compare how they are similar and different. Acknowledgements to https://www.tes.com/member/mightygus and https://www.tes.com/member/benji5626 for the intial ppts. I would be grateful if you could leave a review if you liked this resource.