Looking closely
Grade 2 science asks a question Grade 1 did not: not just what something is like, but whether it is the right thing for the job. That is design, and it runs through the whole year.
What Alberta asks for by the end of Grade 2
The subject: Science
- Look at the properties and types of materials, and choose them for suitability, availability and sustainability.
- Investigate where light and sound come from and how they behave.
- Look at Earth's landforms and bodies of water, and their relationship to the Sun.
- Investigate how plants and animals grow, and how they relate to humans.
- Design precise, reliable and efficient instructions.
- Describe the purposes and procedures of investigations in science.
“Precise, reliable and efficient instructions” is computational thinking without a computer. A set of steps that works, works every time, and has no wasted steps — which is a genuinely demanding thing to ask of seven-year-olds and a genuinely useful one.
The words, first
These are the terms a teacher will use at a parent interview, defined before anything below uses them.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Property | Something you can observe or measure about a material: hard, flexible, waterproof, transparent. |
| Suitability | Whether a material fits the job. Glass is transparent, which suits a window and does not suit a bicycle helmet. |
| Sustainability | Whether using something can continue without running out or causing harm. |
| Light source | Something that makes its own light — the Sun, a bulb, a flame. The Moon is not one; it reflects. |
| Transparent, translucent, opaque | Lets light through clearly, lets some through, lets none through. The third one is what makes a shadow. |
| Vibration | A fast back-and-forth movement. Every sound starts with one, and it needs a material to travel through. |
| Landform | A natural feature of the land: a mountain, a valley, a plain, a coulee. |
| Life cycle | The stages a living thing passes through: seed, seedling, plant, flower, seed again. |
| Instruction | One step someone else can follow. A useful set is in order, unambiguous, and has nothing unnecessary in it. |
Light
Travels in straight lines. Blocked by something solid, which is what makes a shadow. Bounces off a mirror. Very fast.
Sound
Travels as a vibration through air, water and solids. Goes round corners. Needs something to travel through. Much slower.
What to do at home
- Ask why that material — Why is a window glass and a saucepan metal? Suitability is an outcome you can meet in a kitchen.
- Make shadows — A torch and a hand. Move the torch closer and the shadow grows — light travels in straight lines, and this is how you can see that.
- Feel a sound — A hand on a speaker or a throat while humming. Sound is a vibration, and it is much more convincing felt than told.
- Count the thunder gap — Seconds between the flash and the bang, divided by three, is roughly kilometres. Light is fast and sound is not.
- Write instructions and follow them exactly — For making toast. Including the wrong bits. Precise, reliable and efficient is an outcome and this is the fastest way to it.
- Grow something from seed — A bean in a jar on the windowsill. Life cycles are hard to see in a week and obvious across a month.
Sheets you can print for this
- Which material, and why? — suitability
- Light and shadow — straight lines
- Sound is a vibration — feel it, then change it
- Instructions a robot could follow — precise, reliable, efficient
The expectations above are paraphrased from Alberta Education's New K–6 curriculum fact sheets, which publish a snapshot of each grade rather than the complete program of studies. Alberta's full programs are at alberta.ca/curriculum.