Yesterday, Year 3 carried out a science investigation in order to answer the following question: can shadows help you to tell the time? First, they recapped on how shadows are formed before being introduced to the concept of sundials and exploring their purpose. Next, they set to work in pairs to construct their very own sundials in preparation for testing them on the school playground.

Once they were ready, the children then carried out hourly observations/recordings in order to help them answer the enquiry question. From their results, they discovered that shadows can help you to the the time, as shadows were created from the opaque objects that they had positioned in the centre of their clocks (that’s if sundials had been devised correctly i.e. clock numbers being distributed evenly around the clock faces – this was a problem identified when examining results), and were in align with the times they were observing.

Some children’s results were not always consistent, which they decided was due to the following possible factors; poor weather conditions (it was quite windy yesterday); poorly devised sundials (as already mentioned). From which, the children then made suggestions as to how they would do things differently if they were to carry out the investigation again i.e. check the weather forecast, construct sturdier/more stable sundials etc.