Science 

We appreciate that a science education provides the foundations for understanding the world; through the specific disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. We aim to teach it in a robust way because we appreciate that Science has changed our lives and is vital to the world’s future prosperity.

Our Science offer aims to develop a pupil’s schema of substantive scientific knowledge and concepts, as well as supporting them to understand how scientists have come to acquire this knowledge through disciplinary concepts. We want to encourage pupils to explain what is occurring, predict how things will behave, and analyse causes.

We appreciate that Science knowledge is of a hierarchical nature, and that for children to make progress through the curriculum, they need to develop understanding of each block of knowledge. Therefore, we prioritise teacher-directed instruction to ensure that children are explicitly taught the substantive knowledge required. This includes how we teach scientific vocabulary; we want our pupils to describe scientific processes using technical vocabulary accurately and precisely. We do this by explicitly teaching definitions, and linking them to symbols or images.

There is also the disciplinary knowledge in Science of how scientists have come to know something. This knowledge is interwoven into lessons and includes opportunities to develop a pupil's understanding of scientific procedures - from observing over time to engaging in comparative and fair testing. We use different contexts to maximise our pupils’ engagement with and motivation to study science. We take into consideration the needs to all learners to ensure that everyone can access the work provided.

To view our Knowledge Organisers that show the declarative knowledge that we want children to retrieve for each unit taught in Years 1-6, click here.