Super Science in Year 4

 This week, our Year 4 children swapped their classroom desks for the great outdoors as they brought their science learning to life in a fun and practical way! As part of their topic on classifying animals and plants, the children ventured outside to explore and engage with the natural world around them.

Once outside, the children worked in small groups to collect a variety of leaves, flowers, and plants from the school grounds. This hands-on approach allowed them to apply their growing knowledge of classification — looking closely at different characteristics such as leaf shape, colour, texture, and petal number.

Throughout the session, the children showed fantastic use of their reciprocity and resourcefulness skills. They listened to each other’s ideas, shared tasks, and worked as a team to ensure they gathered a wide range of specimens. It was a brilliant opportunity to practise collaboration and problem-solving in a real-world setting.

Once their collections were complete, the groups moved on to the next exciting task: creating their own classification tables… with chalk! Using the playground surface as their canvas, the children worked together to sort and organise their finds into categories. With creativity and scientific thinking on full display, the playground soon transformed into a colourful outdoor science lab, filled with chalk-drawn grids, labels, and carefully placed leaves and flowers.

It was fun collecting different plants and leaves and making a classification key - Noah and Sophia

You have to use closed questions for a classification key - Iustin

We worked together to collect enough materials to use in our classification key - Aisosa