Steep Church of England VC Primary School

Intent

At Steep, science is an integral part of our curriculum and it is our intention to recognise the importance of science in every aspect of daily life. We aim to provide children with a high quality education that provides children with the foundations they need to achieve this.

Our curriculum will enable children to become enquiry based learners collaborating through researching, investigating and evaluating. We aim to provide a variety of first hand experiences and using the outdoor environment to encourage this further.

At the heart of our curriculum is scientific investigation. Wherever possible, we strive to deliver lessons where children develop their problem solving skills through varied investigations, leading them to be able to answer scientific questions about the world around them.

We aim to ensure that the children’s ‘working scientifically’ skills are built on and developed throughout their time at Steep, so they can apply their knowledge of science when using equipment, conducting experiments and investigations, explaining concepts and most importantly, to ask questions and be curious about the world around them.

 Implementation

Science at Steep is taught on a two year cycle due to mixed classes and topic teaching is used to progress children’s knowledge and skills. Each class has a long term plan with all national curriculum objectives to be taught over a two year period. We aim to link science lessons to topics, where appropriate, to develop the children’s knowledge and understanding.

Science is taught weekly and is carefully planned, following the long term plan, to ensure progression of learning in each year group. This is particularly important for those subject areas such ‘Animals including Humans’ and ‘Materials’ which are covered in several consecutive year groups. Teachers create a positive attitude to science learning within their classrooms and reinforce an expectation that all children are capable of achieving high standards in science.

The national curriculum for science aims to ensure that all pupils:

• 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
• are equipped with the scientific knowledge required to understand the uses and implications of science, today and for the future

Impact

The impact of Science at Steep Primary is that we ensure our children progress to secondary school with the enthusiasm to want to know more about the world and the skills to enable them to work scientifically at a deeper level. Our engagement with the local environment ensures that children learn through varied and first hand experiences of the world around them. So much of science lends itself to outdoor learning and so we provide children with opportunities to experience this.