In this recorded professional learning session, Greta Dromgool and educators from the New Zealand Association of Primary Science Educators (NZAPSE) explore fun ways you can learn and teach about sound. With simple activities using easy to source equipment they demonstrate how to engage students in discovering the science behind sound.
Sound is a fantastic topic to engage students with science and in this webinar there are lots of testable ideas for students to explore both in the classroom and at home.
This webinar is valuable for both primary and lower secondary school teachers, and also parents and caregivers supporting learning science at home.
Thank you for all the great ideas!
Participant
You can download the video and slideshow presentation.
I thoroughly enjoyed the webinar because it was very informative. Many thanks for organising these types of webinars because being a primary teacher I am always on the lookout for new ideas for science.
Teacher
Index
| Topic | Slideshow number(s) | Video timecode |
| Welcome | 1 | 00:00 |
| Index | 2 | 00:10 |
| Introducing NZAPSE, The Science Learning Hub and purpose | 3–6 | 02:35 |
| Sound resources | 7–9 | 03:36 |
| Sandy Jackson: musical sounds activity | 10 | 04:29 |
| Chris Duggan: seeing sounds activity | 11 | 12:11 |
| Sterling Cathman: pump up the volume activity | 12 | 18:07 |
| John Marsh: grass sax, oboe and clucking chicken activities | 13 | 29:30 |
| SLH links, keep in touch and thanks | 14–15 | 37:10 |
Activity ideas
Explore further with one or more of these activities:
- Sound detectives – students take part in a class experiment to locate sounds when blindfolded.
- Modelling waves with slinkies – students model how sound travels by sending waves along two stretched plastic slinkies tied together.
- Make and use a hydrophone – students make a hydrophone and use it to listen to underwater sounds.
- Sounds in a pool – students listen to sounds made in a swimming pool while being under water themselves.
- Measuring the speed of sound – use a timing app to measure the speed of sound.
- Investigating sound – simple exploratory activities and questions to experience and build an understanding of sound.
- Hearing sounds – using whispers and vibrations to hear and experience how sound moves.
- Musical sounds – experience how striking, blowing, plucking and scraping create sounds and how these sounds can come together to make music.
- Investigating movement and sound with a pūrerehua – create and use a Māori musical instrument.
This is the second webinar created in collaboration with NZAPSE, see Chemistry in the primary classroom for more hands-on science ideas.
Related content
You can also have a look at the Science Learning Hub’s Sound topic if you want to learn more.
We’ve made a partial replication of Building Science Concepts Book 18 Exploring Sound: Using Sound-makers and Musical Instruments. This article and interactive explore the big ideas and science concepts for Physical World levels 1 and 2.
Sound – lower primary is a collection of resources and notes for educators. You are welcome to copy the collection to your own profile, where you can edit and curate additional resources. The article Creating collections tells you how to get the most out of a collection.
The PLD article Physical World – Sound curates Hub resources for the early years through to year 10.
Acknowledgement
This webinar has been created in collaboration with the New Zealand Association of Primary Science Educators.
Useful link
Find a range of engaging ideas and activities to support the 2020 Primary Science Week topic Sound on the NZAPSE website.
