At Monkleigh Primary School, we recognise the importance of Science in every aspect of daily life. The Scientific area of learning is concerned with increasing pupils’ knowledge and understanding of our world, and with developing skills associated with Science as a process of enquiry. It will develop the natural curiosity of the child, encourage respect for living organisms and the physical environment and provide opportunities for critical evaluation of evidence.
Science Intent
At Monkleigh Primary, we encourage all children to develop curiosity and a sense of excitement towards Science. Our Science teaching aims to give all children a strong understanding of the world around them whilst acquiring specific skills and knowledge to help them to think scientifically, to gain an understanding of scientific processes and also an understanding of the uses and implications of Science, today and for the future.
Implementation
At Monkleigh Primary School, the children are taught in mixed age classes. To ensure that all children cover the Primary Science National Curriculum we have created a 2 year rolling plan suitable to each class and the year groups within them. These units are then planned using a unit overview with prior knowledge being key as a starting point. Children have weekly lessons in Science throughout Key Stage 1 and 2, using various programmes of study and resources. In Early years, science is taught through the children learning about the world around them in their learning through play and adult led activities to ensure the children develop strong foundations ready for the Key Stage 1 Science curriculum. Disciplinary knowledge and enquiry skills are embedded in each topic the children study and these topics are revisited and developed throughout their time at school, with some of these skills taught explicitly to ensure children can apply their disciplinary knowledge confidently in practical enquiries. Within each lesson, teachers carefully plan Flashback questions to recap on previous learning. These include questions linked to learning from the previous lesson, the last unit taught and learning from previous units. This model allows children to build upon their prior knowledge and increases their enthusiasm for the topics whilst embedding this procedural knowledge into the long-term memory.
All children are encouraged to develop and use a range of skills including observations, planning and practical enquries, as well as being encouraged to question the world around them and become independent learners in exploring possible answers for their scientific based questions. Specialist vocabulary for topics is taught and built up, and effective questioning to communicate ideas is encouraged. Concepts taught are reinforced by focusing on the key features of scientific enquiry, so that pupils learn to use a variety of approaches to answer relevant scientific questions.
Impact
Our Science Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. The work given to pupils, over time and across the school, consistently matches the aims of the curriculum. It is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge and skills for future learning. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. Pupils are making progress in that they know more, remember more, understand more and do more. They are learning what is intended in the curriculum. All learning builds towards end points, these end points will be in children’s books for each unit of work and demonstrate the learning and impact of the unit of work, We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- In KS2, Tracking of knowledge in pre and post learning mind maps
- In KS1, final unit assessments are used where appropriate
- A judgement on standards achieved against the unit end points
- Pupil discussions about their learning, what they now know, remember, understand and can do.
