Year 3 areas of study

Plants – students should be taught to:

Identify and describe the functions of different parts of flowering plants: roots, stem/trunk, leaves and flowers
Explore the requirements of plants for life and growth (air, light, water, nutrients from soil, and room to grow) and how they vary from plant to plant
Investigate the way in which water is transported within plants
Explore the part that flowers play in the life cycle of flowering plants, including pollination, seed formation and seed dispersal

Animals, including humans – students should be taught to:

Identify that animals, including humans, need the right types and amount of nutrition, and that they cannot make their own food; they get nutrition from what they eat
Identify that humans and some other animals have skeletons and muscles for support, protection and movement

Rocks – students should be taught to:

Compare and group together different kinds of rocks on the basis of their appearance and simple physical properties
Describe in simple terms how fossils are formed when things that have lived are trapped within rock
Recognise that soils are made from rocks and organic matter

Light – students should be taught to:

Recognise that they need light in order to see things and that dark is the absence of light
Notice that light is reflected from surfaces
Recognise that light from the sun can be dangerous and that there are ways to protect their eyes
Recognise that shadows are formed when the light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object

Forces and magnets – students should be taught to:

Compare how things move on different surfaces
Notice that some forces need contact between two objects, but magnetic forces can act at a distance
Observe how magnets attract or repel each other and attract some materials and not others
Compare and group together a variety of everyday materials on the basis of whether they are attracted to a magnet, and identify some magnetic materials
Describe magnets as having two poles
Predict whether two magnets will attract or repel each other, depending on which poles are facing

Primary fee calculator

Year 4 areas of study

Living things and their habitats – students should be taught to:

Recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways
Explore and use classification keys to help group, identify and name a variety of living things in their local and wider environment
Recognise that environments can change and that this can sometimes pose dangers to living things

Animals, including humans – students should be taught to:

Describe the simple functions of the basic parts of the digestive system in humans
Identify the different types of teeth in humans and their simple functions
Construct and interpret a variety of food chains, identifying

States of matter – students should be taught to:

Compare and group materials together, according to whether they are solids, liquids or gases
Observe that some materials change state when they are heated or cooled, and measure or research the temperature at which this happens in degrees Celsius (°C)
Identify the part played by evaporation and condensation in the water cycle and associate the rate of evaporation with temperature

Sound – students should be taught to:

Identify how sounds are made, associating some of them with something vibrating
Recognise that vibrations from sounds travel through a medium to the ear
Find patterns between the pitch of a sound and features of the object that produced it
Find patterns between the volume of a sound and the strength of the vibrations that produced it
Recognise that sounds get fainter as the distance from the sound source increases

Electricity – students should be taught to:

Identify common appliances that run on electricity
Construct a simple series electrical circuit, identifying and naming its basic parts, including cells, wires, bulbs, switches and buzzers
Identify whether or not a lamp will light in a simple series circuit, based on whether or not the lamp is part of a complete loop with a battery
Recognise that a switch opens and closes a circuit and associate this with whether or not a lamp lights in a simple series circuit
Recognise some common conductors and insulators, and associate metals with being good conductors

Primary course information

supplementary homeschooling is a choice for many students

Contact us

If you’re thinking of enrolling your child at Wolsey Hall Oxford and you’d like to know more about what we do or how to enrol, please get in touch. We’re ready to enrol new students throughout the academic year.