Mastereign Little Newton
Primary Four
| Insects’ Movement | ||
| (Insects’ Locomotion) | ||
| Through this lesson, students will learn about insects’ movements and the general characteristics of insects in order to differentiate insects from other animals. Students will be using a paper card of a ladybird, paper straps and metal clips to construct a paper model of a ladybird with three pairs of limbs, allowing them to observe and understand insects’ leg movement and how they move in the natual world. This lesson is designed to enhance students’ ability to observe, analyse and evaluate living things. Students will develop greater interest to explore about insects and gain useful skills such as inferring, evaluating as well as learning fundamental scientific knowledge to cultivate a love for nature.
Key Scientific Terms: Insects’ Locomotion. |
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| Small Flash-light | ||
| (Electric Circuit/ Energy Conversion) | ||
| Electricity is widely used in our daily lives. The simplest electric circuit consists of batteries, electric bulb, wires and switch. Through this lesson, students will learn how to make a small flashlight by constructing a simple electric circuit that allows electric current to flow and illuminate a bulb. Students will learn that electric current only flows through closed circuits and any circuit which is not complete is called an open circuit. They will also be encouraged to investigate, generate possibilities, infer and evaluate certain factors that will influence the luminance of flashlight. This strengthens students’ thinking skills and knowledge on electric circuits.
Key Scientific Terms: Batteries, Insulated Copper Wires, Chemical Potential Energy, Electrical Energy, Tungsten Bulb and Switch. |
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| Dinosaur | ||
| (Fossil Science/ Archaeology) | ||
| Dinosaurs are reptiles that existed on earth about 130 million years ago. There were different kinds of dinosaurs differing in body size, shape and eating habits. In this lesson, students will have an opportunity to work as an archaeologist to chisel off a rectangular block cast of white clay so as to extract a dinosaur figurine embedded within the cast. Students will understand that archaeology is a discipline which studies ancient history of human beings according to objects left behind and materials of ancient mankind. Besides extracting the dinosaur, students will also learn to classify dinosaurs based on the food that they consumed. Dinosaurs can be categorized into herbivores, carnivores or omnivores once their eating habits have been identified.
Key Scientific Terms: Dinosaur, Archaeology and Fossils. |
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| Woodpecker | ||
| (Gravitational Potential Energy/ Energy Conversion) | ||
| Woodpeckers are birds that can climb and drill into trees. Woodpeckers use their sharp beaks to drill holes and obtain food from trees. In this lesson, students will fix a simple wood pecker model connected to the wood ring on rod via a spring. The experiment will allow students to observe the effect of gravity, and that vibration is the alternate motion that passes by an object’s equilibrium point. Thus, this lesson is useful to equip students with more knowledge about woodpeckers as well as about gravity. Students will also be practising their observational and evaluating skills during this lesson.
Key Scientific Terms: Earth’s Gravity, Gravitational Attraction Force and Gravitational Potential Energy. |
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| Jet Boat | ||
| (Energy Conversion/ Buoyancy/ Forces) | ||
| Jet boats rely on high-pressure air cushion to move. In this lesson, students will construct a jet boat utilizing a quadrilateral foam board and an inflated balloon which upon deflation will produce energy to allow the boat to move forward on water surface. Students will be able to observe that their jet boat model is able to float on water. Students will observe the effect of buoyancy and explore ways to make the jet boat move. This inquiry-based teaching method gives students the opportunity to enhance their learning as they develop useful skills such as observational, inferring, analysing as well as evaluating skills while experimenting with the Science kit.
Key Scientific Terms: Acting Force, Reacting Force and Buoyancy. |
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| Jumping Magnet | ||
| (Electric Circuit/ Electromagnetic Induction) | ||
| An electromagnet is an application of the magnetic effect of electric current. The wire of an electromagnet is wound into a coil and an iron-core is placed inside the coil. The live wire causes it to become magnetic. When an electric current passes through the wire, the iron-core inside the coil will be magnetized and thus, creating a temporary magnet. Electromagnets become much more magnetic because of the overlapping of two magnetic fields. The magnetic property of an electromagnet can be controlled by switching on or turning off the electric current. An electromagnet is in fact, a live solenoid with an iron-core. The ferromagnetic core magnifies the magnetic field to thousands of times the strength of the field of the coil alone in an iron-core electromagnet. In this lesson, students will construct an electric circuit to allow a magnetic circular object to flip continuously under the effect of electromagnetic induction. Thus, such hands-on lesson will be useful to enhance students’ scientific and technological thinking as well as encourage them to have spirit of exploration.
Key Scientific Terms: Electromagnet, Electromagnetic Induction, Electric Circuit, Magnetic Attraction Force, Magnetic Repulsion Force, Chemical Potential Energy, Electricity and Magnetism. |
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| Drifting Doll | ||
| (Buoyancy) | ||
| In this lesson, students will be able to create their drifting dolls by placing 2 plastic droppers attached with metal screws in a transparent plastic bottle of blue-coloured water and upon squeezing the plastic bottle, water will flow into the plastic droppers to decrease their buoyancy causing the plastic droppers will sink. Students will be able to observe the reaction of the dolls when the bottle is being squeezed. By pressing on any part of the plastic bottle which is filled with water, the float-sink doll may bear the pressure and allow water in if there are holes. When weight increases, the bobber will sink; if released, water in the bobber will flow out and the bobber will float on the water. This concept is also commonly used in submarines. Also, through this lesson, students will get to enhance their knowledge on buoyancy and learn about Pascal’s law. Hence, through hands-on activity of making a float-sink doll, students will learn the principle behind the drifting doll through their own discovery. Over time, inquiry-based and activity-based learning will develop students to become a self-directed learner.
Key Scientific Terms: Buoyancy, Suspension, Sink and Density. |
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| Weaving Machine | ||
| (Classification) | ||
| The people in ancient China were masters of cloth weaving. The efficiency of weaving loom was not great until the textile weaving machine was invented by Huang Daopo in the Yuan Dynasty. Today, the weaving machine has incorporated the use of technology to liberate people from the tedious process of making clothes. Through this lesson, students will learn to make their own weaving machine capable of weaving different coloured cotton threads. By making their own simple weaving machine, students will get to learn more about technology and the origin of the weaving machine. Also, this lesson would be helpful to improve students’ psychomotor skills and enhance their ability to classify objects.
Key Scientific Terms: Classification of Colours. |
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