Science

Mickleton Primary School 

Curriculum Statement for the Implementation of Science

To provide children with the opportunity to develop their curiosity and build their foundations for understanding the world around them through varied and first hand experiences and investigations. Children will gain an understanding that science has changed our lives and that it is vital to the world’s future prosperity. The curriculum aims to provide children with the range of skills and knowledge necessary to make an impact in their future lives.

Science is taught weekly throughout the school for up to 2 hours a week. A new approach has been introduced to years 1-6. This scheme of work looks to challenge and question children’s thinking. Work is divided in topics for each year group and each lesson clearly indicated which part of the national curriculum it covers. There is an area for a teacher and student assessment of the piece of work. To ensure there is challenge and differentiation, the majority of the lessons provide thinking questions that stimulates and excites pupils’ curiosity about phenomena and events in the world around them. 

Each year group now has a scientist of the term which is linked to their topic of work. This enables children an opportunity to see how the skills they are learning can be related to the real world. The children are required to research the scientist and complete a homework sheet to share with the class. 

The objectives for science are to:-

• develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics
• develop understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science through different types of science enquiries that help them to answer scientific questions about the world around them
• equip children with the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future.

The scheme of work used throughout the school supports the teachers by giving them a bank of thinking questions for each lesson. These questions can be differentiated by the number of key questions given and by the response required. These questions can be discussed orally, require a written response with children being really challenged to give reasons to support their answer. Through discussions and observations it is evident that the majority of teachers use mixed abilities groups to help the development of all children.  Children are often given word banks to help form written parts of their work and worksheets are often contain various scaffolding to ensure all children make progress in lessons.

Science contributes significantly to the teaching of English in our school by actively promoting the skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. Some of the texts that the children study as part of the Big Write programme are of a scientific nature. The children develop oral skills in science lessons through discussions (for example of the environment) and through recounting their observations of scientific experiments. They develop their writing skills through writing reports and projects and by recording information.

Science contributes to the teaching of mathematics in a number of ways. The children use weights and measures and learn to use and apply number. Through working on investigations they learn to estimate and predict. They develop the skills of accurate observation and recording of events. They use numbers in many of their answers and conclusions.

The impact and progress in this curriculum area is measured through book trawls, learning observations, learning walks, data monitoring, pupil interviews and staff questionnaires.