Science
“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.”
Claude Levi Strauss
Intent
At Stanley Primary School, our Science curriculum teaches all cultivate an open mindedness to the suggestions of others and encourages children to ask and answer questions in order to help them understand and process the world around them and prepares them with the critical skills for adapting to living and working in our ever-changing society. It promotes a sense of awe and wonder and nurtures children’s natural curiosity. Our main purpose is to encourage children to use the 5 different types of enquiry as a vehicle for exploring age-appropriate scientific content and making sense of substantive knowledge, abstract concepts and phenomena linked to Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
Implementation
In Stanley Primary School we use the National Curriculum objectives and KAPOW science scheme as the foundation for our planning, teaching and assessment. We take further planning inspiration from a range of reputable websites and schemes. We teach lessons on weekly basis for 90 minute and repeat and revisit the same areas of science throughout school in a spiral curriculum which builds progression. At Stanley, we discover how different areas of science link together in realistic contexts, study famous scientists and their impact upon the world and make links to science careers through the making connections units. We proudly hold an annual Science Day to help raise the profile of science around school. We aim to build upon previous knowledge using retrieval activities at the start of lessons which are built into our scheme of learning. We teach scientific vocabulary explicitly, display it on our working walls and refer to it throughout a topic to enable pupils to communicate their findings using the relevant scientific vocabulary. We assess and record pupil progress after each topic taught through a end of unit quiz and knowledge catcher task. A common thread of Scientific enquiry skills runs through every single science topic. We reinforce classroom learning through fieldwork, visits and visitors to the enhance and enrich our Science curriculum.
Impact
The intended impact of our Stanley science curriculum is that children:
- demonstrate a love of science work and an interest in further study and work in this field
- retain knowledge that is pertinent to Science with a real-life context.
- be able to question ideas and reflect on knowledge.
- be able to articulate their understanding of scientific concepts and be able to reason
scientifically using rich language linked to science.
- work collaboratively and practically to investigate and experiment.