Pupils Zara and Frankie share here what they have been doing in their science and chemistry lessons during the first part of the school year. At Fyling Hall Junior School pupils benefit from using the senior school facilities. Our sixth form students also take an active part in the school community – visiting junior school lessons to help inspire our younger pupils. 

By Zara and Frankie;

This half term years 5 and 6 have been in the chemistry lab carrying out some fun experiments.

Our topic has been ‘Changes of Materials’, and we started off by investigating dissolving, adding different solids to water to see if they were soluble or insoluble, and then we found the saturation points of sugar and salt in water.

The following week year 6 went up into the lab with head boys Tomas and Toby to separate mixtures. Toby showed us how to use evaporating and condensing to separate salt and sugar from water, but also how to turn the blue flame orange using table salt!

Tomas taught us how to separate a mixture of sand and water using filter paper and soaked Zara and Annabel in the process! With Mrs Richardson we separated two solids from each other using sieving and magnetism.

Finally, we investigated reversible and irreversible changes, making predictions first.

What we thought about the chemistry experiments;

“I really enjoyed learning the different ways of separating mixtures (and getting soaked).” – Zara, year 6

“I really enjoyed melting different substances and using evaporation.” – Charlie, year 5

“I liked it when we melted the chocolate to see if it was a reversible change. It smelled so good!” – Seraphina, year 5

“I learned that salt can change the colour of a flame.” – Harry, year 6