ISE 5-14 Curriculum Support Materials                                                           Overview advice

Group 3 exemplar Earth & Space  - Making Materials Change (Word)

1. The children can use worksheet B4 (G) to draw or write about the materials they have found. Those who find writing difficult could stick a sample of the material onto the sheet with Sellotape e.g. a piece of cocktail stick for wood, a small square of fabric for cotton, a small piece of tin foil for metal etc.

2. Talking about rubber balls being made of plastic might be confusing. An alternative might be to talk about something like knives and forks which can be made of steel - like the ones in the school dinner hall - or from plastic - like the ones you sometimes get at parties or as used by young children - and some have plastic, bone or wooden handles with a metal blade. Provide examples if you can.
   
   Most balls these days are made of plastic but there are many different designs - hollow, soft balls, sponge balls, solid balls, solid ‘super, bouncy’ balls etc.
   When planning the investigation get the children to think how they could measure the ‘how bouncy’ of the ball. Perhaps one child could bounce the ball while another marks the height it reaches on a sheet of paper pinned to the wall. Would this be a fair test or could the force with which the ball is bounced vary each time? Perhaps the balls could be rolled off a table to make sure that they each get the same amount of push given to them.
   
   At this stage the children should understand the idea of it having to be fair and your aim should be to encourage them to realise that you must only change one thing at a time in an investigation - in this case, the type of ball. Everything else must stay the same for it to be fair otherwise we could not tell if ball A is the best bouncer or simply that the child who bounced it is stronger or bounced it harder than the other balls.