How can Explorify help you teach children about Sounds?

We have created helpful new guidance on embedding children’s long-term understanding of the science of sound. For each ‘learning focus’ within the Sound topic, the guide identifies the most useful Explorify activities to use during each step of the learning journey.  

Firstly, there are activities that are particularly useful for formative assessment to help you find out what the children already know. By uncovering misconceptions and identifying strengths in the children's prior knowledge, you can ensure that lessons meet the needs of your learners.  

Then, the guide identifies Explorify’s Sound activities that will support your subject knowledge and provide ideas for appropriate science enquiry to ‘Take it further’ in the classroom.  

Finally, other Sound activities are highlighted that will allow children to consolidate and elaborate on what they have learnt. This revisiting helps children deepen their understanding, building their long-term memories.   

Starting with our senses, Explorify’s Listen! What Can Your Hear? activities get the children using their hearing to identify sounds. What’s Going On? Relaxing rabbits will encourage the children to talk about why rabbits have large ears. The Odd One Out Big Ears provides lots of information about different animals and has suggestions for activities to do with the children including a simple pattern seeking investigation from the Ogden Trust. Try playing a quiet noise and ask children to count how many steps they must take before they no longer hear it. When they use their hand to cup their ear, can they take more steps away from the sound? 

Ask the children to try to explain how sounds are created by the musical instruments in our Odd One Out Musical vibrations. Why is the speaker vibrating in the What’s Going On? Good vibrations? and why is the rice jumping up and down on the drum in Rice and rhythm? These are great ways to introduce the concept that sounds are created by vibrations. Children could then observe musical instruments like guitars and drums vibrating, or twang rulers. Ask them to place their fingertips on their throat and notice what they can feel when they hum, talk or sing. 

The new What’s Going On? Dancing salt and Have you ever heard your neighbours in the next house or flat?  can prompt an exploration of how sound vibrations travel through different materials. Children can easily compare how a gentle scratch on the underside of a table sounds normally, and with their head laid on the upper surface of the table. The Zoom In, Zoom Out Listen carefully, will get children discussing how medical staff can hear your breathing or your heart though a stethoscope. In contrast, the Big Question Why do astronauts communicate non-verbally in space? explores why sounds cannot travel through space. 

The new Odd One Out How do they hear? focuses on how animals communicate (a focus in the Scottish curriculum). Whilst, with the fascinating Who is Tim Lamont? children can discover how scientists who understand that sounds travel a long way in water are helping our coral reefs.  

The What’s Going On?, Pitch perfect can be the launch pad for a pattern seeking investigation into pitch. Following this, the new activities Playing high and low and String family both focus on the same stringed instruments to help children consolidate their learning and deepen memories. The meaning of the words pitch and volume are easily confused. It is important to clarify that pitch is about whether the instrument makes a high or low sound, and volume is about how loud or quiet a sound is.  

What if you could hear every sound at equal volume? will really get the children thinking. After the discussion, children could make their own instruments and demonstrate how to change their volume. Listen! What Can You Hear? Getting closer and the Big Question How far away should you go so you don't get woken up by snoring/ giggling? focus on how sounds get fainter the further away you are from the source. To measure how the volume changes, the children could use a wide-open space, and a noise with a consistent volume, and measure the volume at various distances away. By having one sound source and measuring its volume in different directions, children will observe that the sound is travelling out in all directions, spreading out over a larger and larger area.   

The Scottish curriculum includes exploring the structure and function of sensory organs. The Zoom In, Zoom Outs Hidden depths and Speak up are great prompts to explore the importance of our ears.   

For more advice about building long term memories read our blog. You can also watch our planning support video on teaching sound and download the supporting PDF. When planning practical activities, teachers should be supported by guidance from their health and safety advisor.  

Tell your teaching friends and colleagues how Explorify has helped you and encourage them to sign up if they do not already have a log-in. 

Image credit

Children playing musical instruments by DGL images