Key Stage 2 · Year 6 · ages 10 or 11
Year 6 science: what your child learns
Year 6 science covers classification, the circulatory system, evolution and inheritance, light and electricity. Children group living things, including micro-organisms, and explain their reasons, and learn how the heart, blood vessels and blood work and how diet, exercise and drugs affect the body. They use fossils and adaptation to see how living things change, learn why light travelling in straight lines explains sight and shadows, and draw circuits using symbols.
Guides for parents
Year 6 science
The circulatory system and healthy living
What Year 6 children learn about the heart, blood vessels and blood, how nutrients travel around the body, and how diet, exercise and drugs affect health.
Year 6 science
Circuit components and symbols
What Year 6 children learn about series circuits, how the number of cells affects lamps and buzzers, how switches work and how to draw circuits with standard symbols.
Year 6 science
Fossils, inheritance and adaptation
What Year 6 children learn about fossils, why offspring vary, how plants and animals are adapted to their environments and how adaptation can lead to evolution.
Year 6 science
How light travels and how we see
What Year 6 children learn about light travelling in straight lines, how we see light sources and reflecting objects, and why shadows have the same shape as objects.
Year 6 science
Classifying living things
How Year 6 children classify living things into groups, from vertebrates and invertebrates to plants and micro-organisms, with a worked example and home ideas.
Everything in the Year 6 science curriculum
The National Curriculum topics for Year 6, in the order the National Curriculum lists them.
Working scientifically
- Working scientifically (years 5 and 6) (Years 5 and 6)