Year 5 Measuring Shadows

Over the past few weeks, the Year 5’s have been looking into shadows; How they are formed, what factors affect their size, and how they change in position and size throughout the day.It is one thing to listen to someone else’s conclusion as to why things work the way they do, but another to investigate it yourself – and our budding scientists have been doing just that! What happens to a shadow when the light source moves further away from the object? Well, ask any of our Year 5’s and they will not only be able to explain it but demonstrate it as well.

Working in pairs, our little investigators hypothesized their predictions and set out to read and record as much data as they could in order to make it a fair test. From these results, they drew conclusions about how the distance between a light source and an object affects the size of it’s shadow – and had buckets of fun while doing so!

Robyn Pieters
Year 5 Teacher