Seeing Light

#TheCompleteSeries7lessons

This Year 6 Light planning pack contains easy-to-follow lesson plans, a slideshow for each of the whole-class teaching inputs, differentiated activity ideas and a range of printable resources, including light KS2 worksheets, picture cards, challenges and more, to support your class as they carry out their independent learning tasks. It's fully-planned so all you need to do is download, teach and enjoy investigating light with your class!

#Lesson1CreatingShadows

Revisit and revise your class's knowledge and understanding of how shadows are formed using this fully-resourced light planning pack. Pupils will discuss and investigate the differences between shadows made by opaque, translucent and transparent objects, and why shadows take the form of the object creating them.

This introductory lesson comes with a detailed lesson plan, differentiated activity ideas, lesson slides and printable resources, giving you everything you need to revise the children's ideas on how shadows are created.

#Lesson2ShadowExperiment

This lesson sets up your class to conduct a measuring shadows experiment. They will discuss and explain how they can change and manipulate an object's shadow in different ways. They will investigate how changing the distance of an object from a source of light can change the size of its shadow. They will need to make careful observations during the experiment and draw conclusions. They also have the option of extending their investigation using 'What if...?' style questions.

All the printable resources needed for this lesson are included in the download as well as a detailed lesson plan, lesson slides and differentiated activity ideas.

#Lesson3TheEye

Use this lesson plan and resources to teach your class about the human eye and the different parts. Discuss the functions of each part and how they all work together to use light so that we can see. The lesson aims to have your children identify and label each of the parts of the eye using diagrams and discussion.

The Eye KS2 worksheets included in this lesson pack helps support and extend your class as well as lesson slides and differentiated activity ideas to promote discussion.

#Lesson4HowWeSee

This How We See KS2 lesson plan pack explores how reflecting light allows us to see objects. Your class will be challenged to draw and label accurate diagrams to show how light is reflected off of objects and into our eyes, allowing us to see the object. The children will need to explore the fact that all objects reflect and absorb light in different amounts.

The resources included in this How We See Things Year 6 lesson pack provide you with differentiated activity ideas as well as supporting printable resources and lesson slides.

#Lesson5Reflection

This Reflection KS2 Science lesson explores the law of reflection with your Year 6 class. The included lesson slides explains and labels the angle of incidence and reflection, the normal and how the angles in reflections will be equal to one another. The children will be asked to identify these different parts before they attempt to place mirrors around a light maze to direct a ray of light around the maze. Alternatively, the children can use the provided printables in this lesson to explore how a periscope works, making their own from a template. They will then draw and explain the route of light through the periscope.

#Lesson6RefractionofLight

This bending light KS2 lesson explores how light can be 'bent' as it travels between different mediums. Use the included slides to demonstrate and discuss how the different mediums change the speed and direction of a ray of light and can help to focus, or spread light using lenses. They also show how we can use these effects of refraction to help us see when our eyes may not focus light correctly – as well as other uses such as magnification and projection.

This light KS2 Science lesson pack comes with lesson slides, a detailed lesson plan, differentiated activity ideas as well as printable resources to support and extend your class's learning about light.

#Lesson7HowDoWeSeeColour

Use this How Do We See Colour KS2 lesson pack to teach your class about how white light can be split into seven different colours: the colours of the rainbow. Your class will investigate how the different colours' wavelengths can affect how they behave when refracted. They then look at how the light reflecting off objects can also allow us to see the colour that the object is, depending on which colours are reflected. Your children will explore how prisms can split white light and explain this using the supporting resources.

Complete with a detailed lesson plan, lesson slides and differentiated resources, as well as an end of unit quiz, this lesson gives you everything you need to wrap up your class's topic on light.

Free Overview (Medium-Term Plan)

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

Free Assessment Grid

Download a free, editable assessment grid to support your teaching of this scheme of work.

Curriculum Objectives covered

• planning different types of scientific enquiries to answer questions, including recognising and controlling variables where necessary
• reporting and presenting findings from enquiries, including conclusions, causal relationships and explanations of and degree of trust in results, in oral and written forms such as displays and other presentations

• recognise that light appears to travel in straight lines
• use the idea that light travels in straight lines to explain that objects are seen because they give out or reflect light into the eye
• explain that we see things because light travels from light sources to our eyes or from light sources to objects and then to our eyes
• use the idea that light travels in straight lines to explain why shadows have the same shape as the objects that cast them