STE for 3rd Class

From the properties and states that make a material right for a job, through the class's first tightly modelled fair test on melting ice, to gentle heating and cooling, dissolving, conductors and insulators of heat, and a first look at materials and the environment.

Investigate everyday forces, use fair testing to compare them, build simple machines, sort renewable and non-renewable energy and watch stored energy change to movement, then explore light sources, reflection, the spectrum and magnifying. Fair-testing skill from Materials is revisited with forces.

From what digital and non-digital technologies do for us and their advantages and drawbacks, through inputs, processes and outputs, to first computational thinking unplugged and a first run of real coding in Scratch with sequences, loops, events and debugging.

Build the foundations of the design process: start with shapes that make paper stiff, draw plans others can build, build and fair-test strong structures, define a real problem for a real user, then complete a two-lesson design-build project that builds, tests, improves and presents a prototype.