Changing Sound

#TheCompleteSeries7lessons

This Changing Sound Year 4 planning pack contains seven ready-to-teach lessons that have all the resources you need to deliver outstanding Science lessons. Each lesson has a lesson plan, a slideshow for the whole-class input, differentiated activity ideas plus an alternative activity, and a range of printable resources, including worksheets.

#Lesson1WhatisSound

The first lesson in this series introduces children to the idea of sound being caused by vibrations and gives them the opportunity to explore visual ways of representing this in a practical, hands-on way.

The included lesson plan suggests two ways in which you could undertake learning activities with your class, depending on the resources you have available.

#Lesson2TravellingSounds

This lesson encourages children to think about the different materials sound travels through before it reaches their ears and to think about what this tells them about the different materials sound can travel through.

They will also have the opportunity to carry out an experiment to see which materials sound travels easily through and which muffle sound.

#Lesson3SoundandDistance

How far away from a sound do you have to be before you can't hear it anymore?

This lesson gives your class the opportunity to devise and carry out their own tests to see if they can find what happens to sound as you increase the distance between the sound and the person hearing the sound.

#Lesson4SoundBlock

Why might soundproofing be helpful? What materials may be used for soundproofing purposes? Why?

This lesson gives your class the chance to consider why it is sometimes necessary to prevent sound from travelling to the ears and to find out how this can be achieved through their own soundproofing activities and investigations.

#Lesson5PitchPerfect

This fun lesson will get your class thinking about pitch and how notes of high and low pitch are created on different instruments.

Following this, give children the opportunity to test their musical ears and explore pitch in a variety of ways during either of the two included activities.

#Lesson6StringSound

This lesson allows your class to investigate what happens to the pitch of notes on stringed instruments when the thickness, tightness and length of strings are altered.

You can work with real instruments, or undertake the alternative activity, where children can make their own guitars!

#Lesson7AirVibrations

Get ready for some bottle-blowing fun!

The final lesson in this series explores how air can vibrate to produce sounds and how the length of the air column in wind instruments changes the pitch of that sound.

During either of the two included activities, there are opportunities for children to investigate how sounds are produced in this way, and how they can be changed.

Free Overview (Medium-Term Plan)

Download a free overview to support your teaching of this scheme of work.

Free Assessment Grid

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Curriculum Objectives covered

• asking relevant questions and using different types of scientific enquiries to answer them
• setting up simple practical enquiries, comparative and fair tests
• making systematic and careful observations and, where appropriate, taking accurate measurements using standard units, using a range of equipment, including thermometers and data loggers
• gathering, recording, classifying and presenting data in a variety of ways to help in answering questions
• recording findings using simple scientific language, drawings, labelled diagrams, keys, bar charts, and tables
• using results to draw simple conclusions, make predictions for new values, suggest improvements and raise further questions
• using straightforward scientific evidence to answer questions or to support their findings

• 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