During Covid-19 partial school closures, Anna-Kaye Kelly adapted a range of activities from the ASE remote learning resources to support the development of her Year 5 (age 9-10) pupils’ vocabulary for properties of materials.

Using a Google Jamboard with a word bank from the ASE resource, the children were asked to find items around their house with the different properties. They then sorted these on using the Jamboard ‘sticky notes’ to move them into different categories.

The following week, in a live group session, the children were asked to link properties to uses, for example explaining why a frying pan was made from metal and plastic. Children explained that ‘the main part is metal to get hot so that the food could be cooked’, ‘the handle needs to be plastic so you don’t get burnt’. By re-visiting the glossary, the children were prompted to use the vocabulary of thermal conductors and insulators in their explanations.

Starks Field Primary School, London